


Life During Wartime

by Tabi_essentially



Series: Wartime verse [4]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Badass, Corpses, Creepy, Crimes & Criminals, Graphic Description, Harm to Children, Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Explicit Torture, Partnership, Road Trips, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-16
Updated: 2012-02-16
Packaged: 2017-10-31 07:10:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 44,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/341323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabi_essentially/pseuds/Tabi_essentially
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Threatened by someone whose job offer they turned down on principle--to incept a gangster's son into heterosexuality--Arthur and Eames travel up the Eastern seaboard, in stolen cars, trains, and various hotels, to find out who is tracking them, and break some deserving teeth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please mind the tags: there is some creepy stuff in here. ^_^

_This ain't no party, this ain't no disco  
this ain't no fooling around  
I'd love you hold you, I'd like to kiss you  
I ain't got no time for that now_

_Trouble in transit, got through the roadblock  
we blended in with the crowd  
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines  
I know that that ain't allowed  
We dress like students, we dress like housewives  
or in a suit and a tie  
I changed my hairstyle so many times now  
don't know what I look like!  
You make me shiver, I feel so tender  
we make a pretty good team  
Don't get exhausted, I'll do some driving  
you ought to get you some sleep_

** ** **

Arthur is shopping for groceries in NYC when he receives a text from Eames that reads: 

_I've you fowarded an email I rec'd re a job offer, read it but DO NOT RESPOND TO IT, call me back as soon as you've read it. XO E._

He checks his email and finds the forwarded message from a server that tries and fails to be anonymous. Eames has not deigned to give his thoughts along with it. The email from the prospective client reads:

_Hope I got the right contact for this, please respond at once if so. Searching for the gender-switching forger and his team INCLUDING (very important) the gangster point man of legend. Have an important job, money = NO OBJECT, I mean this._

Arthur frowns, re-reading the email a few times. Finally, he can't control the smirk. Seriously, is that how they're known? 

He pays for his groceries (some frozen organic pizzas, vegetable juices and other low-maintenance goods,) and goes outside into the biting November air. Knotting his scarf with one hand, he taps Eames's number into his phone, and maybe he's a little giddy, because maybe this sounds like an interesting offer.

"Arthur, oh my god," Eames says by way of greeting. 

"Eames, hello. What is this email all about?"

"If it isn't the _gangster point man of legend._ That's seriously how I will think of you from now on. Oh, it's noisy where you are. The city?""

"And you'll always be the gender-switching forger. Yes, I'm in the city, New York to be exact. What _is_ this?"

"A sincere job offer, apparently. But one we're not taking."

"Don't I get a say?"

"Oh, wait till you hear. I've already answered the email. The gentleman wants to know if inception is possible."

Arthur claps his hand over his forehead. "You're right, we're not taking it."

"It gets better. Or worse, really."

"Do tell."

"This gentleman wants us to incept his adolescent son..."

"Yes?" Arthur can practically hear the drumroll in Eames's voice.

"Into heterosexuality."

Arthur stops walking. The man behind him crashes into him, brushes him out of the way, and keeps going. Arthur ducks under the awning of an old apartment building, out of the path of the pedestrians, and shifts his earth-friendly canvas bag onto his shoulder. For a second he almost laughs. But: "That's... Well, I'm not one to talk about morality after the jobs we've done, but it's..."

"It's cruel, is what it is," Eames says.

"Yeah. So you told him no."

"And that is where it gets interesting, Arthur." He says the name like he always does, as if he relishes saying it. "The gentleman doesn't take kindly to being told no."

"Oh, wow. You mean like, in the movies? Like, either our signature or our brains will be on the contract? That kind of thing?"

"That kind of thing," Eames says. "So, we actually do have work to do, though it is unpaid work, unfortunately. I know how patiently you respond to threats, so I wondered if you'd be interested in dealing with them along with me."

"Well," Arthur says, unable to hold back a smile, "it's not safe to let something like that go on. I feel my personal security has been compromised. We need to take measures."

"Yes, measures," Eames says. "The gentleman is on the east coast. I suppose I have to get myself up there anyway. So Arthur, have you a day or so to get ready?"

"I think I can manage it."

"Good. I'll get over there and get us a car. I'll send you all correspondence so you can start tracking. I can be there in, oh, thirty hours?"

"I'll be waiting."

"Excellent. See you then, Arthur."

** ** **

Arthur and Eames, parked outside a mini-mart in a stolen car on the I95 heading north, a case of bottled water in the backseat, two separate iPods, Arthur's brown leather jacket slung over the driver's seat and Eames's winter coat stuffed into the back, covering a silver briefcase, and two guns in the glove-box.

Turning the ignition, Arthur looks at Eames. "You ready?"

** ** **

The stolen car eases into the left lane. The windows are rolled up, the heat on (Arthur is freezing,) Eames is driving. Arthur fiddles quietly with the iPod, the gentle, rapid "clickclickclick" of the spinning digital wheel the only sound aside from road noise.

"Arthur, I swear to god if I have to hear the Talking Heads one more time."

"What, one more time?" Arthur says. "We only listened to the one album." He scowls because he'd played Talking Heads for a reason. Also, they're one of the best bands ever, in Arthur's estimation.

Instead of acknowledging this, Eames says, "I'm gonna make you take that thing out of my aux-hole."

Arthur opens his mouth to respond, then snaps it shut. Glances down to the plug where he's got the iPod hooked up. _Aux_ , it says.

"It's not your aux-hole. It's ours."

"I stole the car, making it my aux-hole."

Arthur smirks, and reaches for the line to remove it. "Fine, Mr. Eames. I never thought I'd see the day when you wanted me to pull out of your aux-hole."

Eames chortles quietly, and it actually as a real, honest-to-god-chortle. "Leave it in for chrissakes then," he says. "Pick something different."

"I was going to put on Pink Floyd. Shut up and be British."

"No, okay, Pink Floyd is fine."

"Actually Syd Barrett's early stuff."

Eames flicks his gaze over to Arthur. "Really? You've got Syd?"

"Are you kidding me? The Madcap Laughs, Eames. Opel? Genius."

"Play him. I feel like a tragedy today."

"Don't even say things like that." Arthur adjusts the volume.

_On a distant shore, miles from land  
stands the ebony totem in ebony sand  
a dream in a mist of gray...  
on a far distant shore... _

"Ahh, that's just the thing," Eames says. "Skip Birdie Hop though. Stupid song."

"I usually do," Arthur agrees. 

They listen in silence a while, and Arthur looks out the window and watches the other cars go by. He doesn't bother to wonder who is going where. Most people are on the road heading toward Thanksgiving dinners, and anyway it's none of his business. Where he and Eames are going promises to be far more interesting. 

"Who'd you steal it from?" Arthur eventually asks.

"What, the car? I got it off the lot. I don't enjoy taking things from people who need them, and the wealthy are too fancy to fuck around with. I prefer stealing from corporations."

"That's admirable," Arthur says, and he means it. "Did you just... I don't know, walk in there at night and take it?"

"Heavens no. I forged sales documents. It's as legitimate as thievery gets."

"Clever."

Eames glances at him again, as if trying to gauge his sincerity. They're trying to work it out, both of them, so that they're not on each other's nerves because this is going to be a long trip. And Arthur would like to like Eames again. He doesn't mind the sniping—it keeps the energy up when they need it, sometimes—but in the past years the sense of playfulness had gone out of it and sometimes it felt personal. On both ends, he admits to himself. 

"Thank you, Arthur," Eames says, satisfied with his reading of Arthur's possible motives. 

They ride along in amiable silence, northwards, as the sun begins to set. Arthur shivers and pulls his gloves out of the compartment. The guns in there are a reassuring presence.

"I can turn up the heat if you like?" Eames offers.

It's a sweet concession and Arthur takes it for exactly that. Eames is trying. He'd like to try, too. "I'm all right," he says. 

"You're an ectotherm." 

"I just have low blood pressure."

"Or a vampire," Eames offers.

"Maybe later I'll suck your--" his iPhone blares to life with Ariadne's ringtone and he stops mid-sentence.

"I'll take you up on that," Eames says, smiling in the vague twilight. 

Arthur waves him off and answers. "Arthur speaking."

"I know that, Arthur, I dialed you," she says by way of greeting.

"Hello to you, too. Everything all right?"

"You're paranoid; everything's fine. Can't a girl just call to talk?"

"Yes, of course." Arthur hates talking on the phone, he's shit at it. He can never get a read on the other person. "How've you been?"

"Good. Working. Studying and such but I've got a few weeks before break. I, uhh, well it's Thanksgiving soon and I took a few days. I mean all the schools are closed out here in America. So I came home for a bit."

"Visiting your family?"

"Yes." And then she goes strangely quiet.

"Ariadne?"

"Yeah, visiting my family and all. So what've you been doing?"

"Just working a little and..."

"Have you spoken to Dom?"

_Ahh,_ Arthur thinks. _This isn't about me._ "Uhh, I talked to Cobb like... two weeks ago?" 

Eames shoots him a questioning glance. Arthur rolls his eyes good-naturedly.

"Well. How is he?"

"He's all right I guess. You know how it is around the holidays. They're always hard. But he has to be there for James and Phillipa. Why? Were you thinking of... what, going to see him?"

"I thought about checking if he was all right while I was here," she says. "Just to say hi. Cook or something. Must be weird if he's got to see, you know, the Miles family. Arthur, would you do me a favor?"

"What's that, Ariadne?"

"Would you maybe call him and just kind of, I don't know, put it out there on the table? Not directly, but like a hint or something. Just to test the waters. See if he needs a friend or something."

Arthur runs his hand over his hair and glances at Eames again, who is watching him out of the corner of his eye, waiting. "Uhh, sure. I can call him and see what's up."

"Will you be there to see him?"

"Me? No. I'm on a job now."

"An illegal one?"

Arthur laughs. "It's hard for me to go legit, but we're staying out of trouble. Or trying to. For the most part."

"Is that the royal 'we'?" she asks, sounding amused.

"Oh, it's me and Mr. Eames. We're tracking a...a bad guy."

"'Bad guy?' Jesus Christ Arthur, you guys are superheroes now?"

"That's right," he says, with a small smile he hopes she can hear.

"So you and Eames."

"What? We're..." Anything he says will sound too telling to Eames who is listening in. The tone of Arthur's voice has already perked up his ears; Arthur can tell from the upturn of his lips that he knows what Ariadne just insinuated. "We, we can't make it out there for Thanksgiving. Umm, and Eames is British."

She trills out a girlish laugh. "I love you, Arthur, I swear I do. When you're human like this, especially."

"Okay. Thanks." He's never quite sure what to do with declarations like that.

"You might be my favorite person."

"After Cobb," he says, teasing her back.

She laughs a little and says, "Well. You know. Anyway, so I should get going. You two behave, if possible. And happy Thanksgiving or whatever."

"You too," he tells her. "Be careful." Which he means in all sorts of ways, but leaves up to her interpretation as he ends the call.

"So," Eames says, smiling. "Ariadne and Cobb?"

Arthur shrugs. "Well. Ariadne, anyway."

"Called it."

"You did. I just don't know if, you know. If Cobb's..."

"Stable enough for any sort of human interaction?"

"I wouldn't go that far," Arthur says. "It's hard to get back into the relationship kind of thing after that kind of loss. He's got a lot on his plate."

"Did you ever have a thing with him, Arthur?"

"A _thing_?" Although he knows exactly what Eames is asking. "Not like..." _Not like I have with you._ "I feel loyalty to him, that's all. He and Mal did a lot for me. Did a lot of issues get explored? Of course; that's what happens when you share dreamspace. Did we ever fuck? No. I wouldn't have intruded on him and Mal like that."

"I wouldn't have used those terms, Arthur."

"Why not? I like to be direct."

"You certainly do. Think Ariadne's got a chance?"

Arthur shrugs. It's really none of his business, and now the questions are getting tiresome. He'd forgotten what a gossip Eames could be, but he supposes it comes with the territory of being a reader of people. Eames has simply got to know.

"More a chance than anyone, I guess," Arthur says, finally. "These things are complicated. Be quiet and listen to the music. Stop pestering me about these things you humans call 'emotion.'" A joke at his own expense, to lighten the mood.

Eames smiles in acknowledgment. "Arthur. You are anything but cold."

"I thought I was a reptile."

"I said ectotherm. Don't lie; you've got feelings, tons of them, and they burn you up from the inside."

"Oh god, here we go," Arthur gripes.

"No, not at all. Just an observation on one of my favorite people."

Eames really is a terrific reader; Arthur can't deny it. He borders on mind-reading. "I'm popular, what can I say."

In reply, Eames takes his hand off the wheel and gently squeezes Arthur's leg. It's a friendly gesture with no innuendo behind it.

They listen to music without speaking while the moon rises over the I-95. It's ten PM when Eames pulls off onto an exit and says they should stop for the night.

"This early?" Arthur asks, having been roused from a light, meditative sleep.

"Early day tomorrow, I'm afraid," Eames says. "We'll ditch this car here in case I've been made, and take the train up to where I've got another car waiting."

"You're very thorough, Mr. Eames."

"Thorough keeps one out of prison, doesn't it?"

"Let's hope," Arthur says, as they pull into the parking lot of a hotel.

Checking in, they are informed that since it's the holidays and they have no reservation, the only room the hotel's got left is a double, and would that be all right? As Eames tells the concierge they'll take anything, Arthur can't help but wonder why the question would even need to be asked. Are they that obvious?

** ** **

When they get to the room, even Eames has to admit it's cold as hell. He turns up the heat by the digital wall-mount.

"You don't have to," Arthur says, as he throws his travel bag onto the bed closest to the window. Arthur must sleep by the window, Eames remembers. And by Arthur's casual yet obvious choosing of a bed, he understands that they're not sharing one. They rarely do, because Eames sprawls and Arthur fidgets and anyway, they're not "bedding together" sorts of people, on the whole. Even after fooling around—and it's been a while—they've always tended to sleep separately. Perhaps it's less the sprawling and fidgeting and more the proximity vs. privacy. They share dreams, after all. They need some space when sleeping without the PASIV.

"I'm cold, too," Eames says. "Is seventy all right?" That's around 21 to him, which he realizes is too warm, but Arthur wears a sweater even when it's around 18.

"Sixty-five is fine," Arthur says.

Eames smiles and makes it sixty-eight. The radiator hums to life. The room is comfortable but not posh; a typical business Holiday Inn, the kind with a coffee maker, hair-dryer and ironing board. Also broadband internet service and a mounted computer on a desk, but Arthur has brought his own laptop and will probably not be using hotel broadband for his purposes. In fact, Arthur toes off his shoes, tosses aside his jacket and sits cross-legged on the bed, opening his own laptop.

"Arthur, would you like to have a shower?" Eames offers. He doesn't add the word "first" on the off chance that Arthur is willing to have a little fun.

Arthur's eyes dart up to his, warm but tired. "That's all right; you drove all day. Go on ahead. I have a little tracing to do."

"Right," Eames says, taking off his own shoes and jacket. He pops open his travel case and fishes out sweatpants and a t shirt. He's more exhausted than he'd thought.

The warm shower feels lovely and relaxing when he finally gets into it. The water smells different up this way, harder. Something about traveling makes him feel more at home than being at home. He likes hotels. Likes working. Likes working with Arthur, he supposes.

He takes about a half an hour in the bathroom, and when he comes out, Arthur is in the same position on the bed, tapping away madly at his laptop. He's wearing his glasses, and he's got that crease between his eyes, the one that he gets when he's working and deep in thought. Eames realizes that he's not going to stop soon.

"I'm setting the alarm for 6 AM," he tells Arthur. "You should get some rest."

"Huh?" He looks up, that concentration crease momentarily disappearing. "Oh," he says. "I will. I just have to finish this. Actually, come here." He beckons, and turns the laptop on the bed.

Eames crawls onto the bed with him and looks at the screen.

"Okay, so we established that the name the guy who sent the email is E. Kelly in Vermont, right?" He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose and rubs at his eye under the lens.

"Right," Eames says, watching Arthur carefully for the transformation he knows so well.

"Well, he's worth about ten million in hotels and property up there. You smell nice."

"Oh. Thank you. Twenty three million, eh?" That's small time compared with Saito, Eames thinks, and he knows Arthur is probably thinking the same thing. Money has never seemed the same since meeting him. How can twenty three million seem so paltry? It boggles him.

"But here's the thing. He's been hauled in for fraud, like, three times and nothing has ever stuck. He is completely not on the up and up. It's not just hotels he's dealing here; he has a hand in lots of local businesses if you know what I mean. No matter how much they try to pin him with, nothing sticks to this guy. And everyone who gets pulled to rat on him gets disappeared and then everyone else clams. Bodies show up every time he gets in a scrape. He's not big-time or anything, but he's not small beans either."

Eames listens, enthralled, to this Arthur That Was, the one that shows up when he isn't even paying attention to how he sounds. The Arthur that Eames knows falls away, and the person he was before his assumed name emerges, and he doesn't even realize it.

"So he's a gangster, then," Eames says. "We've dealt with worse."

"I know we have. I'm just saying we need to watch our backs with this one. We both had a feeling that he wasn't legit, I mean who wants to incept their own goddamn kid? And remember, he raised us. So he's got some kind of in. How'd you even get on his radar, Eames?"

"Money buys all sorts of information, Arthur," Eames says, using the name gently, unsure if he should break the spell or not, the one that Arthur's put himself under. "We've both made enough enemies to realize that. Does Nash ring a bell?"

"Every bell I own, he rings it, but I have no doubt that Nash is long rubbed out."

"Arthur, you know you can't be sure. Cobol could use a man like that."

"Cobol has no dogs in this race, but I hear you, someone sold us and this Kelly guy made us. I guess it doesn't matter who did it. Either way, we're in it and we need to..."

He trails off, and Eames realizes then that he's been staring.

"We need to be careful," he finishes. Then he removes his glasses and sets them aside, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Once again he's Arthur That Is – the man Eames met through Cobb. "This could easily go badly. So what I've got to do now is try to configure a map of all of his businesses, the big ones and the small, peripheral ones. I already pinged him so I know his servers; he won't be hard to locate, but I need to actually break into his system and I'm sure he's got firewalls, so in the meantime..."

"Arthur, sleep," Eames urges. "We're not in any hurry. You should wait until he contacts me again anyway. Doesn't that make more sense? Because he will contact me."

"I know. But I have to know."

Of course Arthur has to know. Information is power. Information, Arthur firmly believes, and has told Eames on many occasions, saves lives.

"Well, I'm going to turn in. If you need anything, don't be afraid to wake me."

"I'll keep the lights low," Arthur offers.

"No, it's all right." Eames leaves Arthur's bed for the comfort of his own, and climbs between the sheets. "Leave your light on so you don't strain your eyes."

Arthur chuckles as if that's a joke, and puts his glasses back on.

By the time Eames hears him get up and go into the shower, it's 12:23 AM. When he finishes and comes out, Eames is only halfway asleep. Arthur shuts his light, and when Eames cracks his eyes open to see if he is finally going to sleep, Arthur instead takes up his former position, cross-legged on the bed, and open his laptop again.

Sighing, Eames turns over and begins to drift off.

** ** **

It's 3:30 AM by the time Arthur shuts down the laptop. It's made a warm spot on his bed and that is somehow comforting as he draws up the blanket and turns over. 

Behind his closed eyes, he sees maps, ISPs, firewalls, city block layouts. Information keeps him awake for another half hour as he tries to fit all the pieces together, to get a clear image of this E. Kelly, purveyor of land, loans and other, more illicit goods. 

When he does finally drift off to a light sleep, it's not for long. 

In the dark, a whispering voice rouses him.

" _Yes but I'm not sure how we can get in,_ " hisses a feminine, American accented voice.

" _Leave that part to me,_ " answers another American, but distinctly male voice.

The hair on his arms rises and Arthur reaches slowly, quietly, outside of the blanket. The Glock is under the bed (it's foolish to keep it under the pillow, he can only imagine shooting his own damn head off; how stupid he would feel if he died that way.) He moves with exquisite slowness in the dark.

" _How can you be sure they're trustworthy?_ " comes the feminine whisper again.

" _Can't be too sure,_ " answers the male voice, just as quiet.

Arthur eases closer to the edge of the bed and slides his hand down towards the floor. The room isn't totally dark and he keeps his eyes wide open, sure that he will see the intruders in a second. The voices are coming from the door; in fact it sounds like they're already in the room, though how could that even be? How would he have missed them breaking in? He hadn't even been entirely asleep.

He can't see them—maybe they're in the short hallway—but that's no guarantee that they can't see him by the tiny lights of the charging laptops and iPods and phones. Sweat breaks out on him, cold. 

He wraps his fingers around the gun, and all at once, the panic drains from him, leaving him confident, and not a little angry.

In a second, he's got the covers thrown off, the light on, and he's charging into the hallway, Glock in one hand, ready to break wrists and smash noses with the other.

Eames is awake, out of bed and behind him just as quickly; Arthur doesn't have to check to see he's got his gun in hand too. In fact, as Arthur scans the hallway and kicks open the bathroom door, he knows without looking that Eames is at his back, facing the other way. Without being told, Eames opens the folding door of the closet, aiming his gun.

Arthur checks in the bathtub; Eames leaves him and goes to the window, moving aside the heavy curtains and vertical blinds. For about sixty seconds, they search the room in silence. And then, finally, each lowering his gun, they meet again in the middle of the room.

"All clear," Eames says. "What happened?"

"I heard two people talking. A man and a woman, American. They mentioned wondering how they could 'get in,' and if we were trustworthy. Something like that."

"Are you sure you weren't dreaming?" Eames asks.

"I was awake. I can tell the difference."

"Maybe they were at the door," Eames says. "In which case, we've already been made."

Arthur sits on the bed. They had sounded too close to be just outside the door. The adrenaline drains and finally, he's tired enough to sleep. But he knows he mustn't. "Look, I'll take watch. You've been driving all day. I'll never be able to sleep now."

Eames releases a breath through pursed lips and sits on his bed. For a moment, Arthur can do nothing more than stare at the pulse jumping at his clean-shaven neck. There's a moment in which some ancient longing tingles his spine and he wants to push Eames back on the bed and make him come undone, drain the adrenaline out of him, the way he feels drained. He doesn't understand his own fear response, sometimes. Then he stamps that feeling down firmly and feels the tension ease out of his shoulders.

"You're going to be exhausted tomorrow," Eames says.

"I'll sleep on the train."

Eames smiles, close-lipped, nothing more than an upturn of his lips. His grey eyes are unreadable. Arthur has never been able to entirely figure him out. The one person he can't see clearly, it seems. He's never understood it, the way he shifts in and out of focus even when they're both awake.

"I sleep quite well when I know you've got my back," Eames says, his voice quiet.

"I know," Arthur says. "Go on." He shuts the light again as Eames gets back under the covers.

And since Arthur has nothing better to do aside from listen for the rest of the night, he pulls the laptop back onto the bed and flips it open.

Maps, ISPs, firewalls, city block layouts.

** ** **


	2. Chapter 2

It's seven years since he met Arthur, seven years since he first saw him as a young man of 24 in a pinstripe suit looking like a gangster. He'd thought the fedora a strange prop, and thought Arthur's hard-boiled, subtle swagger an affectation until he'd seen him casually break the arm of a man who'd waved a gun in his face. Seven years ago. And today, as they ditch the car and buy train tickets to Vermont, with cash, it's raining like it was on that day, and Arthur still wears a fedora in the rain.

He's quite mad about Arthur, he's aware of that, too. He's also aware that before anything else, they are business partners and today, they are on a business trip. Of how much is at stake, Eames is aware.

But when Arthur stands aside and beckons him to enter the train first, with a noble little incline of his head, Eames is aware of Arthur's hand on the center of his back.

 _Did I grow a vagina in my sleep?_ Eames thinks, wondering, not for the first time, at Arthur's gentlemanly side. There's something ridiculously old-world about him, and it's not actually an affectation. Eames does affectations for a living; he can tell by now.

The dark smudges under Arthur's tired eyes. Of those, too, he is painfully aware.

The silver briefcase locked inside a hard-covered, black, much more innocuous case, which Arthur will keep under the seat instead of overhead.

The fact that Arthur offers him the window. Eames declines, thinking that if Arthur wants to sleep, he can rest his head against it.

Eyes watching the two of them, whether in curiosity about whatever they perceive in their body language, or the fact that a young man of 30-ish years is wearing a pinstripe suit and fedora on a train. Or maybe the watching is something more sinister. Maybe they really have been made. He can feel eyes on the back of his neck and he is _hyper_ aware of that.

"If you brought that book you're reading," Eames says, "I'll look at it over your shoulder."

Arthur turns to look at Eames sharply, eyes slightly narrowed. He hasn't brought a book and they both know it. It's their old code: _Look at it over your shoulder._ They worked out those catch words years ago and Arthur is now aware that Eames is telling him, _We're being watched._

"Oh, I didn't bring one; just my phone and some clothes. I'm a little forgetful today." _I didn't notice it, but I'm off my game._

"No worries then," Eames says, and stands aside to let Arthur into the window seat. Arthur's got that crease between his eyes again. He takes a furtive look around before sitting down.

"Which book was it?" Arthur asks. _Who's watching, do you know?_

"No specific book; it was just an idea."

"Ah," Arthur says. "Well, I'll keep my specs peeled for a good one at the station."

The rest of the passengers shuffle around, negotiating seats. The car is packed. It's Thanksgiving, Eames realizes suddenly. He wonders if Arthur's forgotten, or if he cares at all.

Maybe he's jumping the gun. He's still shaken up about last night, Arthur hearing those people at the door. Anyone else, and he would think that they had fallen asleep and imagined it. But not Arthur. Those are not the kind of mistakes he makes, on the rare occasions when he makes them. But perhaps the knowledge that someone was outside their door last night has got him jumping at shadows. Maybe the eyes he feels on the both of them have more to do with the way Arthur is dressed, or the fact that they're both attractive, or the solicitous way that Arthur had stepped aside for him. The unthinkingly intimate touches that are beginning to creep back into the spaces between them, filling them.

Now that he thinks of it, Arthur hasn't touched him in such a way in many years - this combination of intimacy and friendship. Not since Mal died, anyway.

Well, observed or not, there's nothing he can do about it now, and no one is likely to start anything on the train. When they get off, maybe, but not until then. So he fishes around in his bag as the train sets off. Pulls out his iPod and sticks the buds into his ears as he clicks through his playlists.

Rachmaninoff, today. Nothing will soothe him more, and nothing seems more appropriate on this rainy day, on a train with Arthur, with his fedora in his lap.

About forty-five minutes into the trip, Eames is lightly dozing off when Arthur starts his fidgeting. Eames cracks an eye open and watches as he tries to lean back in the chair and close his eyes. They flicker open in annoyance a second later. He crosses his legs and then uncrosses them. Shifts to his right hip and then to his left. Crosses his arms and then lays them in his lap.

The computer that is Arthur's brain won't even go into hibernation mode. He can practically see the images flipping across the screen of his mind.

Eames sighs and pulls the buds out of his ears. "Can't get comfortable?" he asks.

"My brain won't shut down," Arthur grumbles. "I packed my iPod in... in the black case."

"I see. Want to share?"

"What are you listening to?" Arthur asks, his voice suspicious. 

"Rachmaninoff."

That earns him a pleased smile.

"I mean, it's no Talking Heads, Arthur. Afraid I don't have that on my playlists, you see." He offers one speaker to Arthur, who accepts it gratefully.

They're plugged in together not through the PASIV this time, but through the music coming from the iPod – in some way, still sharing headspace. Sometimes he muses that he can read Arthur's mind without dreamsharing. And sometimes a smaller connection is enough.

Arthur settles back against the seat and closes his eyes, breathing an obvious sigh of relief. Eames is amazed that after all these years of knowing Arthur, fighting beside him, occasionally fighting against him, and occasionally bedding him, he's learned something new: The right music not only brings Arthur around, it also shuts him down.

"This is nice," Arthur says. "I've never really heard it before."

"Ah, such a shame," Eames says. "But I envy you hearing it anew. Listen."

Arthur does, gently tapping out the rhythm on his own leg. Eames watches him because watching people is what he does. He especially likes it when they're unaware, as Arthur is now. The tapping of his hand soon turns into vague flourishes and the lines on his face smooth out.

"You air-conduct," Eames says, smiling. He does it wrong (Eames had to forge a music teacher once – the things one learns in his line of work,) but it still looks graceful, the notes tapped out in the air by Arthur's long fingers.

Arthur smiles, his eyes still closed.

"Terrifyingly enough," Eames points out, "you remind me of Hannibal Lecter when you do that."

This time Arthur responds with a tired laugh. Eames isn't entirely kidding: he's seen those graceful, chilly hands do great acts of violence. Okay, so maybe not beating someone to death with a baton, but still. 

"Maybe I'll eat you later," Arthur says. Then he cracks open his eyes and gives his best slatted look. "Liver, fava beans, chianti, etcetera." 

"Can't think of a better way to go," Eames says.

Arthur closes his eyes and settles back again, comfortable.

Eames closes his eyes too and enjoys the small connection the iPod offers them. 

The train roars its way up North.

** ** **

By the time they get to Vermont, pick up the new car that Eames has already stolen through forged documents, and find a hotel that's not booked solid, it's dinner time. Eames is ravenous; Arthur must be, too.

The receptionist at the hotel had told them, hesitantly, that the only room she had was a single, and that was only because of a cancellation. 

"Anything is fine," Eames had told her, not even bothering to check for Arthur's reaction. They'll be sharing a bed later by necessity, but currently Eames has more on his mind than admittedly adolescent excitement. It's best if they both get some sleep later.

Their mark (and by this time, they must call E. Kelly their mark, as they are tracking _him_ now,) hasn't contacted him. This is cause for alarm. It means that he's being quiet. Which means he's probably got something planned. And Arthur hasn't yet found a way into E. Kelly's computer. 

He can tell that this is weighing on Arthur's mind, too, as they wait to be seated at the mostly empty Holiday Inn hotel restaurant. Why they have to wait is beyond him; there's no one there but a group of college kids who obviously didn't make it home in time, an elderly couple, and them. 

Finally the hostess seats them in a booth, which Eames likes. He'd rather not be looked at. Paranoia is catching up with him. The piped-in music plays a jazzed up version of Carol Of The Bells.

"It's Thanksgiving, Arthur," Eames says. 

Arthur raises his glass of water in acknowledgment. 

"Obviously in England we don't celebrate your Indian massacre," he teases. But then adds, more seriously, "But it is nice to acknowledge one's blessings all the same. What are you thankful for, Arthur?"

Arthur drinks a sip of water and shrugs. "Work, I guess. Not having to live on the streets. Knowing I won't go hungry or homeless. I've got it pretty good compared to most of the population." He looks down, smiling a little, and frowning a bit at the same time. "And I'm glad to be here with you, tonight, Mr. Eames."

"I'm honored," Eames says, raising his own glass of water and tipping it against Arthur's. "And the truth is, I really can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing. I suppose I could be curled up on a nice sofa with a duvet and a cup of tea and slippers... Hmm. That does sound nice, actually."

"You're a comfort whore, but you love the adventure as much as I do," Arthur says.

The song ends, and goes into one that Eames has heard only once or twice: something about Christmas shoes and some dying lady. 

"Your country offers the most appalling holiday music around the entire globe," Eames says.

"I apologize."

The waitress comes around to take their orders and informs them that they have a Thanksgiving turkey platter. Arthur declines and opts for soup.

"No turkey on Thanksgiving?" she chides gently.

"I'm vegetarian," Arthur says.

Eames orders the turkey platter because, why the hell not?

Arthur's phone pings and he checks it. "Text from Cobb."

"And?"

Arthur reads: " _'Hello Arthur, happy thanksgiving, hope you are well. Did Ariadne call you about anything?'_ " Then he smirks and quickly taps a text back. "' _Yes Dom,'_ " he reads as he texts, " _'she said she was in the states and wondered if you wouldn't mind seeing her. Happy thanksgiving, love to the kids, see you soon. Arthur.'_ "

"Why do you sign your name to your texts?" Eames asks. "He knows it's you."

Arthur shrugs. "Habit."

And Eames thinks, with the sudden intuition that often hits him and is rarely wrong, that Arthur signs his name with the people he knows in order to affirm more to himself, than to anyone else, that he is _Arthur_. That he left his previous name and life behind.

Just as Arthur is putting the phone away, it pings again. He checks it, this time frowning instead of smirking. "Cobb again. ' _She called me too and I said I'd pick her up at the station this morning, but she never showed. Was wondering if you'd heard from her. I tried texting her._ '"

And Eames's rarely-wrong intuition flares up again, red warning signals.

"There's no way they'd connect her with us," Arthur says, reading Eames's expression. But his eyes say that he believes differently. He quickly texts back to Cobb. " _'I'll try calling her. Just enjoy your thanskgiving. I'll let you know when I hear from her.'_ " He looks back up at Eames. "No sense in worrying him."

Arthur tries Ariadne's phone, but doesn't leave a message when she doesn't pick up.

Suddenly, Eames feels exhausted. He runs his hand over his face, rubs at his eyes. It doesn't seem likely that anyone would ever connect Ariadne to the two of them. But a few million dollars can buy a lot of information.

His mind flits back to the so very few people who had seen them on the plane during the Fischer job. The pilot. The flight attendant. Fischer's driver. Would anyone sell out Saito? Who could they buy, that Saito hadn't already bought? Or could it have been personal? 

"Maybe it's nothing," Arthur says. 

But Arthur has always been shit at lying.

** ** **

 

_Somewhere in a lonely hotel room_  
there’s a guy starting to realize  
that eternal fate has turned its back on him  
It's two a.m. 

_It's two a.m. the fear has gone_  
I'm sitting here waitin', the gun still warm  
Maybe my connection is tired of takin' chances... 

 

After haphazardly throwing their stuff on the one bed in the latest hotel room, Eames opens a large, black suitcase (not the one with the smaller, silver case in it, but his own,) and takes out what looks like a portfolio. This is his traveling work station; Arthur's seen it enough times. He needs to make something, though Arthur only has vague ideas so far what it is he's going to physically forge.

While Eames is occupied with this, Arthur puts in a call on a separate phone, not the one he normally uses. This one has an entirely different name, address, social security number, place and date of birth attached to it.

When his connection picks up, they don't use names.

"Well, hello," says the voice on the other end.

"Hey there, friend," Arthur says. "How's tricks with the Big Boys?" The FBI, he means, though he knows enough not to say it outright.

"Good as it gets," his connection answers. "You know this is the only kind of work I can do."

"You excel as always, I'm sure," Arthur says.

"You need something."

"Yes. I need access."

"For how long?" the connection asks. "And what time?"

"ASAP once I hang up, for maybe twenty minutes. Can you swing it?"

"Sure. Can I ask who you're tracking?"

"One E. Kelly. Ring any bells?"

"Every bell I currently own. Seriously, we've been trying to get the bracelets on this guy for three years, but he's too slippery. How'd you get mixed up with him?"

"He contacted my partner," Arthur says. "Funny world. What do you think you've got on him on?"

"We don't have anything for sure. We suspect, but can't prove, all kinds of goofy shenanigans. Fraud, glomming from the taxman, dope, whores, kidnapping, gun-running, extortion, and many more of your favorite old-time hits. If you can get him nailed, I'd get myself a nice little off-time."

"I'd love to; he's knocking at my door a little too loud."

"Really?"

"Really."

Then, lower, he asks Arthur, "He wants to, what... dream?"

"It goes deeper than that. Listen, he may have snatched one of my birds; I need to know where he's bunking these days."

"Access from your laptop as soon as we break connection," he promises.

"I can't thank you enough," Arthur says. Then, softer: "Hey. How's Shelby?" He pulls the code name from one of the many files in his head.

Laughter from the other end. "The east coast agrees with her it seems; so much that it got her pregnant."

"Wow. Congrats, Daddy."

"Yeah, thanks. Who you eating with these days?"

"My old partner, Tommy."

"Tell him hi. And listen, you're out here on the east, yeah? How about when you give this mug the gate we tip a few? For old time's sake."

"I'd be up for that," Arthur says.

"Keep me in the know on this goose."

"Will do, and when I scram out, he'll be yours."

"Sounds good. Okay; you're in. Access now. Go, and watch your back."

Arthur disconnects, and immediately clicks open the browser on his laptop. He's signed in to FBI confidential files for twenty minutes; enough to get him E. Kelly's address so that he can do all sorts of illegal things, and leave his connection in the clear to take the credit in the aftermath.

Arthur calls over to Eames, "I'll have the goods on this guy's scatter in … fifteen minutes, maybe less. Then you can scratch whatever, and get a slant."

"Well great, then I'll go and have a butcher's on my jack, hopefully not get myself brown bread. Hand me my weasel, would you darling?"

All Arthur hears at first are random words, as he files through E. Kelly's impressive list of unproven have-dones. He nods absently in reply. Then he sits up straight, turns his eyes from the screen, looks at Eames and says, "What?"

"That's what you sound like to me sometimes," Eames says. "I have no fucking clue what you're on about, Arthur. What am I scratching now? What am I slanting?"

"Huh?" Arthur is honestly perplexed. He wonders if Eames is going crazy. Then he thinks, more likely, he himself was distracted and missed something, or hadn't made himself clear. "Oh. I said I'd have his most likely address in about fifteen minutes. You can forge whatever ID you need to get in, and take a look."

"Ah," Eames says. His smile is a little strange. Arthur doesn't know why. "That seems about the long and short of it."

While this is all riveting, Arthur only has a small window of time to find what he's looking for, and he turns his full attention back to the screen.

The face of the man surprises him. E. Kelly—E for Elijah—is much younger than he'd thought, perhaps in his forties. He's quite handsome, with dark hair and the kind of wide, chiseled jaw that usually graces the covers of romance novels he sees so often in airport bookstores.

"Pretty," Eames says, looking over Arthur's shoulder. "That is, if a man can't see what's inside."

"And you can?" Arthur asks. "From a photo?"

"Oh yes. Shark eyes, right there." Eames taps the screen. "Would love an actual psych profile on this man. Who would incept his own son into a different sexual orientation? It smacks of hate crime."

"Horizon Towers," Arthur says. "158 Fisherman's Horizon by the lake, Derry. That's where he stays and that's where he'd have taken Ariadne, if..." He stops, realizing that he's just said it out loud, what they both already know is the case. "At any rate," he continues, quieter, "we're in his neighborhood. I've got some snapshots here of his digs. He has some warehouses in the slummy part of town, so we'll have to be very careful about staying out of them. Christ, he owns nearly everything here."

"All right. See if you can contact Ariadne, or if you can trace her with some magical lingo and technical gadgetry. I've got a little old-fashioned thievery to do."

"And if you're not back by midnight, I go looking for you."

"If you're worried, then yes."

"It wasn't a question," Arthur says. "If you're not back by midnight, I go looking. Be careful. Call me if whatever." 

Eames shuffles a few papers, grabs his winter coat (an olive green pea-coat that makes him look part thug, part military, part anything he wants to project,) and heads out the door.

When his FBI access ends, Arthur tries Ariadne's number a few more times, and gets nothing but her voicemail. 

_Can't raise her,_ he thinks. He paces the room, fists clenching and unclenching. _Can't raise her. Can't raise her._

** ** **

Eames returns at 11:50, no worse for wear, with a jump drive. Without preamble, he tells Arthur, "This is a copy of the surveillance camera files from the time when Ariadne would have been at the station until the time I arrived there. I've already scanned it, already got a read on who's come and gone. She's not on it and neither is Kelly. She's not at Horizon Towers, Arthur. If he does in fact have her, he's got her somewhere else."

Arthur sits down on the bed and scrubs the back of his hand over his eyes.

"We don't know if Ariadne's even involved in this," Eames says. "She could have just decided not to go."

"I can't... I can't get hold of her," is all Arthur can say.

"She could have had some family thing. She could have her phone off or she could easily be where there's no reception."

"Eames, if you really thought that, you wouldn't have spent most of the night searching surveillance videos for her. Come on. You know as well as I do that something's up and she's involved. Probably because of us. Fuck."

He gets up and paces again, because he doesn't know what else to do. He'd checked all international flights and she was indeed on one of them two days ago. Then she must have bought a train ticket with cash, just like they had. Which was smart of her, because how was she to know that she'd find herself getting hooked by this creep?

"I haven't called Cobb," Arthur says. He rubs at the side of his head, where a dull ache is beginning. "What do I even tell him?"

"Arthur."

"What do I even say? He'll blame himself. He got her into this business. If something... if anything happened..." He can't say it. It would be another level of hell for Cobb, and as for himself, he can't even begin to think about another dead girl. He can't delete the word "dead" from his mind quick enough.

"Arthur."

Finally he stops pacing and looks at Eames.

"She's not dead," Eames says. "Was murder on this man's rap sheet?"

"That doesn't prove..."

"If he took her, it's because he wants one of two things. Either he wants to ransom her to us so that we'll work, or he really does know about the Fischer job, and he wants her to work, too. Think about how these people go about their business. He needs her."

"How do you know that's his game?" Arthur asks.

"Because I can't get Yusuf either."

Arthur turns on his heel, tapping at his phone before he even realizes what he's doing. He punches in Cobb's number. It's got to be around 9 PM where he is.

An English-accented voice picks up and says, "Arthur, is that you?"

"Mr. Miles?"

"Yes," he answers. Arthur can hear the sound of some kind of video game in the background. Phillipa squeals about something. "And I hope you can tell me where Dom is," Miles says.

"Fuck," is Arthur's only reply.

"I'll take that as a no, then. All he said was that he'd gotten a call, and was flying out east. He left the children in a hurry, which can only mean one thing."

Arthur can't even think what that could mean. Unless Cobb had already figured out the danger they were in, or had heard something about Ariadne that he hadn't, and was coming to help? But would that be urgent enough for him to leave his children? Likely not.

"Arthur, for him to leave the children means that they would be safer if he were elsewhere. Someone gave him an ultimatum. And it must have had a considerable amount of power behind it." Miles's voice lowers to a near-whisper. "I imagine the ultimatum involved the children. Someone must have threatened them."

Arthur's hand tightens around the phone. And suddenly, all of his panic and frustration seeps out of him as if someone had released a pressure valve. This place he's in now: he's been here before, many times. He knows his way around this sort of crime.

"Arthur," Miles says, his voice mild, "please don't lose yourself. Yes?"

"Of course not," he says. He has no idea what Miles is talking about. "Take care of the kids and watch your back. Get the cops to come around a few times; tell them you heard a prowler. I'll call you if anything. Okay?"

Miles sighs, sounding tired and resigned. "Thank you, Arthur."

And he hangs up.

"You're right," he says to Eames, who has thrown himself tiredly into the large, sterile seat in the corner of the room. "He's trying to re-form the team we used on Fischer. Someone had to have sold us out."

"Which actually means that everyone is probably fairly safe, for now. Soon enough they'll come after us, likely using the others as bait. And we'll go willingly."

Arthur nods.

Eames smiles. "Because, Arthur, the Fischer job was the best thing anyone's ever pulled off. We didn't get lucky, either. Do you understand what I'm saying? We go in, with this E. Kelly. He'll want to come into the dream to make sure we perform as we ought to. Another tourist, you see. And then we take _him_ down instead of his son. People like this don't realize how vulnerable they are down there. Of course we'll probably be heavily guarded while we're under and when we wake, too. They'll think of something suitably horrifying to threaten us with. But once we get Kelly under, we can drastically change his mind or entirely fuck him up. No one in the dream will be looking over our shoulders. Yes?"

"We won't be able to plan anything like this without the others," Arthur points out.

"Oh, dear," Eames says, smiling. "Arthur, when I discovered your zero-gravity antics, I was something like impressed, stunned and ridiculously turned on. I must admit you've got imagination, all right? Use it. We improvise. You're good at that. Cobb might be a loose cannon, but he is otherwise brilliant. So is Ariadne. Now come here."

Arthur stands in the middle of the room, nerves thrumming, eager to go. Improvise. He can do that. He can work under pressure; in fact that's how he works best. Incepting Fischer had been the highest stakes of his life, and they'd done it. This can be done, too. Eames is right. He wants to begin now, but there's nothing yet to begin.

And Arthur can't imagine why Eames is staring expectantly at him. _Now come here,_ Eames had said, apropos to nothing.

"What?"

"Come here and sit." Eames points to the floor at his feet.

Arthur begins to scoff, but one look at Eames relieves him of that notion. He's got a look in his eyes that Arthur has seen him get when he's dangerous. Eames is dangerous when he wants to accomplish something; it doesn't matter what it is. His focus is deadly; his eyes go nearly blank and hawkish. He rarely turns that cross-hair stare on Arthur.

Arthur is not easily intimidated. He reckons he can look down the barrel of a gun with a damn sight more nerve than anyone else he's ever met. Fighting doesn't frighten him or put him off. Pain barely registers, when he's in the middle of something. He watched a man die before high school graduation. He knows what brain matter looks like.

But under Eames's raptor-gaze, he has to admit that the hair on the back of his neck wants to rise. And he's a little curious. 

He drops the tension out of his shoulders and smiles, swaggers a little as he does as Eames requests. Because for all that it sounded like an order, it really isn't.

Eames's eyes never leave his, and his face betrays no hint of his intentions. Thoughts of the things that need to be done in the morning flee Arthur's mind. With a smile that says he's still in control, he kneels at Eames's feet, between his knees.

"Turn around, pervert," Eames says. And finally there is a trace of a smile on his lips.

Not thinking much at all, Arthur does what he's told. Once he's broken the eye-contact that Eames had held him with, the absurdity of the situation hits him and he thinks, _What the fuck?_ He feels as if a veil has been lifted from his head. He remembers then that Eames forges just as well outside of dreams as in them. He doesn't have to change what he looks like to convince people to do what he wants.

Arthur turns around to look at him again when Eames starts peeling Arthur's shirt off of him. 

"What..." he begins.

Eames places his hand on top of Arthur's head and forces him back to the front. Then he slides forward in the chair so that his legs are on either side of Arthur's shoulders.

"Is this going to be gross?" Arthur asks.

"Hush," Eames says. His hands land softly on the back of Arthur's neck, and one travels up to his hair, and the other to his face, tilting his chin up. "Relax now," Eames says. And he jerks his hands up and to the side.

The sound of his neck bones cracking fills Arthur's ears. Then Eames jerks his head the other way and that last vertebrae releases with another loud pop. The tension drains from Arthur's neck and shoulders.

"Asshole," he says, "you could have killed me."

"Have some faith," Eames says, a smile in his voice. "I see a chiropractor every time I'm in one place long enough. There's nothing like it. Feel better?"

Arthur turns his head from side to side. "Yeah, kind of."

Eames's hands don't leave him, instead threading through his hair and digging into his scalp. It almost hurts, but in the best possible way.

"You're petting me," Arthur says.

Eames does not deign to reply. And by the time he's got his fingers down to his neck, and the hard muscles of his upper back, he's wringing noises out of Arthur that usually involve less clothes.

Try as he might, he still can't put the job out of his mind. Although working less feverishly, his brain still won't completely shut it out. Confidence, though: he feels it more, now. He's not some half-assed kid playing with the big boys. He's Arthur, he's the best, and he only works with the best. 

He wants to say something like this to Eames. But he remembers how it was when they were doing the Fischer job. Arthur can back-hand compliment with the best of them when he wants to be a bastard, but he can also be sincere, and it kind of sucks to have sincerity shot down.

But maybe things are different now, without the rest of the team looming over them. _Fuck it,_ he thinks, and turns around to face Eames again. Eames's hands are still on his shoulders, and he tilts his head to the side, questioning.

Arthur says, "I think this can work. And the reason I think that is because I have confidence in your ability. I mean it when I say that you're the best forger there is, and. Well, the Fischer job, for instance. You pretty much owned that. I respect that. I did back then, too, whether you believe it or not. So, it comforts me to work with you, in a way. I like our odds. Otherwise I wouldn't be here."

Eames answers with a small smile. "I see," he says. His hands are resting on either side of Arthur's neck. "You come out ahead because you like betting on sure things?"

"No," Arthur corrects quickly. "I just like to know which side the die is loaded on, that's all. There are no sure things. And I can't think of any more gambling metaphors, sorry."

Why he starts sliding his fingers up the insides of Eames's thighs, he'll never guess. Maybe he needs somewhere to put all the pent-up energy, or maybe he has some sort of kink for competent people, or maybe he really, really likes his job. Arthur, apparently, has A Few Issues, and he's more than happy to cop to them once he figures them out. At least they don't interfere with his work. It's never a sure thing between the two of them, but he is always good at gauging his odds, and Eames has always made it pretty clear that Arthur can get in his pants most any time; only rarely does he say "not now." And right now, from where he's kneeling, it looks pretty good to him.

"Oh my god," Eames says, his voice dark and shaky as his head falls back against the chair. 

Arthur is not in any hurry about undoing his fly and getting started. He's fond of the control; he likes making Eames wait. Not for too long, but long enough to get him worked up. He likes Eames's hand curled around the back of his neck as he mouths along the outside of his boxer-briefs. He likes the shaky sound of his breathing when Arthur finally frees him from his underclothes and sinks his mouth down on him.

"God, Arthur, your mouth," Eames says.

Arthur raises his eyebrows and looks up at Eames. Stops what he's doing for a second to say, " _Mine?_ Please."

"Jesus, why are you stopping?"

"It's just," lick, "I'm nothing special," suck, "I'm kind of plain," lick, suck.

Eames responds with a husky laugh and rolls his eyes. "You're hardly plain, and please stop teasing me."

He considers that, as he moves his mouth at a languid pace. 

"You're...you're..." Eames has to stop talking to make a noise so erotic that Arthur feels himself lurch slightly forward involuntarily. "You're just so fucking lovely, how can you not... God..."

He likes Eames when he can't form sentences. He likes to be the reason for the lack of incoherency and the stuttering breath, and for the thighs shaking beneath his fingers. He likes hearing Eames say, "Arthur, god, Arthur," as if they're the same thing. It's quite something, taking Eames apart like this.

Not too wild about swallowing—it's not like he does this regularly, and if he's honest with himself, it's really been only Eames on and off for about a year—but he can think of worse things to be doing.

He doesn't bother resting his chin on Eames's leg; instead he just sits back on his heels and says, "Well, I'm going to have a shower now."

Eames laughs tiredly, flushed and spread out on the chair. He looks young, clean-shaven and with his hair cropped short, dark blond but bleached by the African sun. Arthur stares for a moment before deciding to get up. He begins to rise, when Eames leans forward and cups a hand around his jaw. He swipes a thumb under his chin, subtle and intimate. 

"How can you think you're plain?" he asks. "People watch how you walk down the street, Arthur. You're different. Don't you know?"

Arthur shrugs, self conscious. "I'd rather not be watched, honestly. If you think about it."

"Shall I list your physical virtues?"

"Please don't," Arthur says, rising to his feet. A little awkward with how turned on he is, come to think of it. 

"I'm tired," Eames says. "I need a shower too. Let me join you so that I can at least take care of that." He smirks, glancing down.

Arthur thinks about economical uses of time, space, and other resources, and agrees with Eames's assessment of the situation and his solution.

And later on, it's not so hard to share a bed, after all. They sleep on separate sides; the bed is wide enough so that when Eames sprawls, Arthur still has enough space. He covers himself with blankets (untucked, always, in case he has to get out of bed quickly,) and Eames only uses the sheet.

Arthur is just about to drop into a real, spectacular, natural sleep when he hears it.

" _What if... But what if you don't find me in time?_ "

Ariadne's voice. She sounds hoarse, dark, her voice low and rough as if she's been screaming. As if someone had maybe choked her. As if she'd been hurt.

Arthur goes still in the bed. The voice is close. There's no way that anyone could have gotten into the room, yet this voice is definitely not coming from outside the door.

" _I need you to find me. Please._ "

Arthur reaches slowly for the light above the bed, quietly. Someone is tricking them. They must have pre-recorded her voice and somehow planted the recording in the room for them to hear. There could be cameras in the room, a bug, oh fuck, he never checked for a bug... He reaches down and grabs his Glock from under the bed.

"We'll get there, I promise, we'll get there." Eames this time, right beside him.

 _What the fuck,_ Arthur thinks, his blood running momentarily ice-cold, confusion turning him inside out. How can Eames be answering her? 

" _I trust you,_ " is the reply in Ariadne's dark, deep voice. Her inflection, her endearing sincerity. In an unusually deep voice.

It hits Arthur like a smack to the head, and he flicks the light on, startling Eames out of a deep sleep. Eames comes awake and sits up, reaching for his gun on the bedside table, his eyes not at all bleary, but alert.

The look on his face is comical. Arthur eases the grip on his gun and feels stupid, angry, ridiculous, relieved. So many things at once that his chest hurts.

"What is it, Arthur?" Eames asks, hushed and all business. His confident, competent business partner, taking in every corner of the room with practiced paranoia.

It bubbles up from Arthur's chest like lava, the loud, barking laugh. He can't control it. The look on Eames's face becomes even more comical. His eyes are wide and owlish in confusion and consternation.

Arthur laughs harder and manages to say, "It's you!"

Confusion turns to concern and Eames scoots closer to him, laying a solicitous hand on his arm. "Arthur? You all right?"

Arthur loses his grip on his Glock and it falls into his lap. He hates how he can't stop this idiotic laughing, but _fuck_ , Eames doing voices in his sleep, scaring the shit out of him, out of them both. He pictures how the two of them were running around their hotel room the previous night, in their pajamas with loaded guns, kicking the bathroom door open and Eames pulling open the closet looking for intruders, when it was actually Eames who had been doing the talking.

He laughs harder, until his diaphragm seizes up and spasms and he can't breathe. 

"Arthur, what the fuck?" Eames asks, shaking his arm, now truly concerned.

"The voices!" Arthur says. His own voice, shaky with laughter, sounds even funnier to him. "The voices I heard, they were _you_ , you talk in your sleep, oh Christ..." And he's gone again, doubled up, fist pounding the mattress.

It takes Eames a moment to process this, and then: "Are you shitting me?"

"Oh my god," is Arthur's only answer.

The hysterics—and Arthur has to admit that's what this is--must be contagious because in seconds, Eames is laughing too. At first fitfully, and then loud and long. He throws himself backwards on the bed, arm over his eyes, and laughs so hard he cries. Arthur has never heard such a loud laugh.

When he finally catches his breath, he's exhausted and almost sick with thirst. He reckons he hasn't laughed so hard in a good many years. Fucking _Eames_ with his goddamn impersonations that he does in his sleep, unaware. He's still giggling as he makes his way into the bathroom for a glass of water.

He almost doesn't recognize his own face in the mirror, red with laughter, and his eyes glazed and shining. 

"I'm sorry for waking you," Eames calls after him, a hitch in his voice.

This makes Arthur laugh again and he has to spit the water he drank before it goes out his nose. Finally he gets his drink and collects himself. Splashes some cold water on his face and uses it to slick back his hair, which is drying into its usual annoying unruliness. 

He thinks briefly that even though it was legitimately fucking hilarious, what happened, he's probably just had a hysterical jag having to do with stress. 

He can't lose Ariadne; he just can't. She's an innocent and he considers her a friend and a worthy partner, each of these attributes are exceedingly rare. And he never wants to look at another dead girl. Ever. The thought sobers him immediately. 

"Arthur?" Eames calls. His voice sounds suddenly incredibly sober, as well. And something else. 

Arthur recognizes it as alarm. He leaves the bathroom to find Eames still sitting on the bed, this time holding his phone. The laughter is gone from his face, too. Dread pools in Arthur's stomach as Eames hands him the phone.

Arthur takes it in fingers that have gone colder than normal and reads the email from E. Kelly. It's a brief message:

_I treat women better than I treat men, forger. At least for now. Meet me alone, 12 tomorrow at the towers. You already know there's cameras everywhere so leave the point man behind when you come._

Two pictures are attached. The first is of Ariadne, from a distance. She's wearing what looks like a fancy dress, red. She's at the door of the Towers, with a man whose face Arthur can't see leading her by the elbow. It's night; they must have moved her there after Eames had left. He can't make out much of Ariadne's face, but he swears he sees fear anyway. There's something around her neck that glows too brightly to be gems. It disturbs Arthur at some deep level, more than the out-of-place dress and the worried way she's looking over her shoulder.

The second picture knocks the wind out of him. It's of Yusuf, blindfolded, gagged, and tied to a chair in a cement room.

"Get some sleep," Eames says. "I'll never get past anyone before noon; they'll shoot us both down if we try. We'll have to split up tomorrow."

"I don't know if I can sleep," Arthur says, his mouth dry.

Eames takes the phone from him and offers a weak, but warm smile. "'Course you can," he says. "We've seen this kind of shit before. Come on." He pats the bed. "They're both alive, and they're necessary to this man's needs. We've got this."

Arthur thinks, _Yes, Eames is right. We've got this. This can go smoothly._ All his ducks in a row. Retrieving them should, by this time, be a child's game. 

He'll see Eames off tomorrow morning and then get to work on his own re-con. This kind of work presents him with no problem.

He sits on the bed and takes the Glock back into both hands.

No problem at all.

** ** **


	3. Chapter 3

Early the next morning, as Eames shaves in the hotel mirror with Arthur standing behind him, he quietly and subtly inspects Arthur for cracks in his cool demeanor. There aren't any, because with Arthur, there is no facade. He is, currently, exactly what he is. Today, that's Professional and Irritated. Eames likes him the better for it.

"At least let me wire you," Arthur says, holding out the tiny bug that he means to attach to some unknown place on Eames's body.

"Arthur, you're delusional. Don't you think I'm going to be frisked? And probably just as thoroughly felt up?"

That delicate line of confusion and annoyance creases between Arthur's eyebrows again. "Likely not," he says. "Homophobe, remember?"

"Exactly. And what does a homophobe hate the most?"

"Well, homosexuals. If you think about it."

"But which homosexual does he hate the most?" Eames presses. He splashes water on his face, and grabs a towel to dry off. "Himself, Arthur."

Arthur's eyebrows raise in mild surprise. "You think Kelly's gay?"

"As gay as the midsummer day is long. Seriously. That's why many of these 'phobes are so fearful, so full of rage. It's themselves they hate and fear, yet they don't wish to turn the violence on themselves. Not all of them of course - some hide behind fake morality, religion, what-have-you. But this bloke has severe issues. Take it from the man who studies the human psyche for a living. He's going to do everything in his power to humiliate me and render me powerless because I refused to help him 'correct' his son. But he'll jerk off to me later."

"You can't go alone," Arthur insists. He looks disgusted.

"Must, and will. While I do so, take that jump drive I brought here last night and put it in my laptop. Not yours, mine. It will auto-run and give you a feed on the entrance to the Towers, the main hall, the garage and the street outside. Those were the only ones I could access but if they decide to move Ariadne or Yusuf, you'll see it. Keep your eyes on the garage, especially. I've no doubt they'll contact you and bring you aboard once I say that we'll take the job. But in the meantime, watch your back because if Kelly's out of patience, he'll just try to nab you like he did Ariadne."

"Got it."

"He'll probably even let me call you once we come to an agreement." He slips his arms into a nice, crisp shirt and starts buttoning. He can see Arthur fidgeting behind him in the mirror, with that wire in his fingers that he desperately wants to put under Eames's shirt.

"I just don't have a good feeling about this," Arthur says.

And once it's out of Arthur's mouth, Eames realizes that he's right. Everything about this job feels wrong and upside-down. Something is going to go badly. He can't deny that intuition, not to himself, and not to Arthur.

"We don't have a choice at the moment," he says, instead of insulting him with false confidence. "We have to work with what we've got."

When Arthur reaches for his collar, Eames thinks he's going to force that stupid fucking wire on him anyway, and the idea annoys him, because really, can Arthur honestly think he can do that? But Arthur utterly surprises him by slipping the starched collar down a few inches, leaning forward and planting an open-mouthed kiss to the side of his neck. His eyes never leave Eames's in the mirror.

"We can still do this our way," Arthur says.

"We can't." Eames reaches behind him and traces the line of Arthur's jaw. He thinks that maybe this is the most intimate they've ever been, through all their years of occasional groping and rutting. "Kelly will run out of patience. He _will_ hurt Yusuf. And he will eventually hurt Ariadne, one way or another."

"I know you're right." Arthur shuts his eyes like he's' trying to block something out, and backs off. "Eames, please do not... just... Don't get hurt. Be careful."

Eames watches him in the mirror, his closed eyes looking almost devout and he thinks, _There are two of him._ He's known it for years, that Arthur used to be a different person, but he hasn't really, until now, understood how deep the split goes. And how vital they both are to who he is and how he functions.

"This time tomorrow we'll be going under and doing things our way," Eames says. "It's just a matter of what we have to deal with to get there."

Of that, at least, he's fairly confident.

But this time the next day, his main concern will be surviving another minute, and when he does think back on these words, he'll offer himself a rueful chuckle at his own expense.

** ** **

Cattle prods, it turns out, hurt like fuck and they really do render one incapacitated. 

He'd met Kelly just as he'd promised: Outside of Horizon Towers, alone, unwired, and willing to go under with him. Kelly is tall, handsome, calm, surrounded by security in the middle of the street, and filled with so much loathing that Eames could feel it coming off him in waves. He'd gotten as far as telling him "My partner and I are willing to go under with you in exchange for..." when Kelly had pulled out a folder of photographs.

The photographs were of him, with Arthur. A handful from when they'd gotten off the train: shared looks between them, fairly innocuous, but telling to anyone who looked closely enough. Arthur's hand on his arm as he spoke to him. A series from the cheap Thanksgiving dinner they'd shared at the hotel restaurant: Eames laughing over the appalling Christmas Shoes song, he and Arthur toasting with glasses of water. The last item in the folder wasn't a photograph, but rather the receipt for the single room at their hotel. 

"This is my point man," Eames had said, even though the general idea was already dawning on him. "No need for you to stalk us; you already know who we are."

Then Kelly had said, "I don't think you're the right men for this job," and that's when the goon behind him had plugged him with what felt like eight thousand volts into the back of his neck.

And now his brain feels like it's been scrambled with a bolt of lightning and Eames thinks of his time as a petty thief on the streets of London, cops and enemies with their batons and fists and other, inventive methods of torment, but this. This is something entirely new.

He thinks about Arthur, not so much in thoughts but in images, as his neurons try to re-arrange themselves into some semblance of normality. Arthur with his stupid wire that he now wishes he'd allowed him to use. And then he thinks, No, maybe the voltage would have burned the wires into his flesh; it's better that he didn't. Arthur would come charging in here and then what would they do to him? What have they got planned for Arthur?

Kelly's face swims into his vision, and the world begins to look a little crisper again.

"As a rule, I treat women better than I treat men," Kelly says, showing white, even teeth that look too big for his mouth. "I really have no qualms about hurting big, strapping, muscular men."

"I'll bet," Eames croaks out, with a smile.

Kelly draws back and punches him; a nasty sucker punch out of fear and cowardice, knowing he's in no way able to hit back. Then Kelly leans down closer, his smile a leer.

Eames licks the blood of his own lips and says, "Why don't we talk about what you really want?"

He knows it's the worst thing he can say, but he's always been shit at keeping his mouth closed when he really gets going. And he can't just lie there and take it.

Kelly kicks him in the ribs, which he sort of expected. Then the goon plugs him with the fucking cattle prod again (and he has time to think that it's a real fucking _cattle prod_ and not a police taser,) and then everything goes black, and stays that way for a long time.

** ** **

It's dusk when Arthur's phone finally rings. 

He's been keeping track of the live feed since returning to the room at just after twelve. He had dropped Eames off a few blocks away from Horizon Towers, and on returning to the laptop in their room, had seen a few of Kelly's goons walking into the entrance of the building. He imagines that Eames had only just arrived and gone inside with them. He wishes he'd seen Eames show up there—get a read on how they planned to treat him—but he hadn't gotten back to the room in enough time.

And he's been watching the live feed ever since, splitting his concentration between the screen of Eames's laptop, and his own. On his own laptop he'd downloaded (stolen, really) the FBI files on Kelly to see if he could dig up some other connection that the pros had missed. 

Arthur could have worked for them, at one time. There had been offers from Quantico even before he'd gotten through college. He had even considered it, before meeting Dom and Mal. They had changed everything. His name, his life, his reality. Had forged him, he guesses, just as much as Eames forges his fictional people – except that Arthur is more real, more true, than the boy he had been before. That smart-mouthed, know-it-all, street tough kid is still a part of him, and always will be; and he is aware of how they merged, the two of him. But he's Arthur now, through and through, as if he had absorbed his past identity. It's what makes him the best.

And yet he can't dig up anything else on Kelly. His files, and his picture, have stared Arthur in the face all day, and he hasn't caught a single thread that he can unravel. 

He's still trying, when the phone rings at dusk.

It's Eames, and Arthur should feel relieved. Instead he just feels vaguely ill, and he recognizes this as intuition.

"Yes?" he says, too wary to use his name like he usually does.

"Arthur." Eames's voice sounds ragged and torn. "Don't come. Don't fucking..."

There follows the sound of a scuffle, the phone being ripped away from him, and Eames's insistent voice in the background over the shouting: _Arthur, don't, Arthur, don't._

"Shut him the fuck up," comes another voice, unfamiliar.

Arthur says, "Kelly?" into the phone.

The line goes dead.

A second later, it rings out with an email notification. He clenches his fist around it before checking. This Kelly is too much of a coward to speak to him. It's all text and email. 

When he opens it, it's a semi-familiar message, with a picture attached.

_I told you I was kinder to women than to men, point man. Question is how much of a man are you? Are you man enough to join me for a meeting or will you let your 'partner' keep suffering. Be at the tower at midnight tonite, there is a party in my son's honor. Jacket and tie._

The attached picture is one of Eames. He's on the floor, with a rope around his neck, shirt off and bloody stripes across his back. He seems entirely unaware that he's even being photographed.

Arthur feels as if his circulatory system has been drained of blood and replaced with liquid nitrogen. A silky, perfectly calm rage suffuses his nerves, spreads to his fingertips, cooling them, stilling the trembling. Suddenly, everything around him is in sharp focus; every detail a fine point.

As he taps his reply: ( _Far be it from me to decline your generous invitation. I won't keep you waiting,_ ) he feels he might even be smiling.

Arthur closes his laptop and goes to the closet, where he's stashed his garment bags. As he does so, he finds himself humming something, a cheerful sound. Rachmaninoff, the one that Eames had played for him. He retrieves the suit he brings on all business trips, for just such an occasion. Casual wear suits him just as fine, but people do, after all, have certain expectations.

E. Kelly, in his original email, the one that had started it all, had asked for "the gangster point man of legend." As Arthur smoothes out imaginary wrinkles in his suit, he imagines that he'll be more than happy to oblige him. 

** ** **

When Arthur passes his reflection in the window of the entrance to Horizon Towers, he gives himself the most cursory of glances before moving on. He knows what he looks like and that everything is in place. He's even worn the hat; it's misty and still looks like rain.

They stop him at the door, of course; armed guards asking to see his invitation.

"I'm on the guest list," he says, his expression fixed to one of impassive disinterest. He holds up the silver briefcase. "Arthur."

The men don't react to his name, or to the PASIV, other than to usher him inside the glass doors, where he is—as Eames had suggested he would be—thoroughly frisked. Not invasively, as these men aren't... well, aren't Kelly, he guesses. They do a pretty professional job, and they don't find anything on him but a dummy phone, one he never uses, which they take away. 

"I'll need it back," he says, as they break out the wands to search him for metal. "It's got all my music on it."

"Whatever you say," says the goon who's now fondling his phone. "Open the case."

"Do you know what this is?" Arthur asks, popping open the locks.

The guard peers into it and laughs. "You don't know Kelly too well, I guess. Yes, we know what it is."

He wonders what, exactly, that implies. He supposes it means that Kelly has done his share of dreaming and is probably militarized. Likely he's had his closest guards militarized, too. That hadn't come up in Arthur's research of him, but he'd learned the hard with with Fischer that it's nearly impossible to turn up dreamwork in research. Not unless the team who trained the mark had betrayed him. Well, at least he knows now.

As one, they back off and allow him access into the main hall. He can hear the sounds of a party going on from the doors beyond the expansive front room of the Towers. The sounds of jazz float from behind those doors. Hardly likely that a young boy chose the music for a party that's supposed to be in his honor. Arthur briefly wonders what the boy is like, but only briefly. It's not really his concern.

"Am I gonna be guarded when I go in?" he asks.

The goons laugh. "We don't really need to have you followed," says one, jerking his chin toward the camera.

Arthur shrugs, politely removes his overcoat, and holds it out to the guards.

"The fuck are we supposed to do with this?" one of them asks. 

"Hang it up," Arthur says. "It's a party, isn't it? And I'm on the guest list. Obviously the illustrious host must have a coat room." He thrusts his coat into the hands of the guard closest, who stares at him, flabbergasted.

Arthur hangs onto the hat, though, and leaves them staring after him. He knows the coat is a lost cause and he gave it willingly. He's going to need to move fast and unhindered anyway.

No one greets him when he enters the expansive party room in Horizon Towers. He pulls the heavy door closed behind him and finds a wall to lean against, while he takes a quick look around. The room is tremendous, with a vaulted ceiling, and opulent in a way that Arthur immediately hates. The décor suggests someone who doesn't know what to do with his new money. It lacks subtlety. So, he thinks, does the owner of the building. 

The jazz band plays on a slightly raised stage, and rich people dance badly on an open floor surrounded by banquet tables. A banner over the stage proclaims: "HAPPY SIXTEENTH BIRTHDAY JOSHUA."

So, the boy that the father wants to incept is only sixteen. Arthur pushes down momentary disgust.

There are more doors in other corners of the room: possible escape routes should things turn ugly fast. Armed guards stand in front of each double-door. He could disarm maybe two of them if he had to, but not all of them.

The song ends, people shift out of his way, and finally Arthur sees Kelly standing by the bar, practically oozing onto a bottle-blonde in a Little Black Dress. She flirts back: cheap, drunk and giggling. Just how Kelly likes them, probably. Then he thinks about Ariadne and how she is the opposite of that kind of woman. Wonders what Kelly would actually do to her if he wasn't so "kind to women." He wants to sneer at that, but he keeps his face neutral, his focus trained on Kelly.

Sensing eyes on him, Kelly finally turns to him. Sees him from across the room. His eyes narrow.

Arthur doesn't move. Doesn't tip his hat, doesn't smile. He continues to stare, trying to lock down that cross-hair glare, the way Eames does. He's not sure if he can pull it off as well.

But then Kelly is crossing the floor to come to him. Arthur doesn't move to meet him. Good sign. He's made Kelly come to him. Another little trick he'd picked up from Eames.

When Kelly is finally within reach, the first thing he does is look Arthur up and down. Then back up. Meets his eyes. Kelly's teeth are straight in his firm mouth, ridiculously white in his tanned face when he smiles. 

"Arthur," Kelly says, affable and at ease, holding out his hand.

Arthur stares at the proffered hand as if he can see Eames's blood on it, and perhaps he actually can. He quirks an eyebrow and looks back up to Kelly. "I don't like to be touched," he says, ice cold.

Kelly's smile falters into something dangerous. "Be nice, Arthur Philip Arceneau of New York City," he says. "I've got something you want."

Arthur shows no surprise that Kelly's come up with his legal name. The guy has resources; he's proved that. Reluctantly, he takes Kelly's large, warm hand. Kelly attempts to crush Arthur's bones, to make him feel small as he shakes his hand. Arthur is not impressed. Given the right leverage, and if he wasn't surrounded by thugs, he could crush Kelly's skull.

Something must have shown in his eyes, he thinks, because Kelly snatches his hand away, with a flicker of... not fear, but apprehension in his eyes.

"You called me here to make a deal with me," Arthur says. "I'm pressed for time, as you can imagine, so if we can please hurry this along, I'll do as you ask and be on my way. With my team."

Kelly smiles wider. "Arthur, Arthur. It's a party. Relax. Be a good guest. So far you haven't shown me any manners, have you? I like manners." He takes another long look, and raises an eyebrow. "The suit doesn't make the man a gentleman, right?"

Arthur takes a look of his own. "I guess not. Mr. Kelly, I'm here to work. I'm not a very social person."

"You seem social enough with your... _partner._ " The smile doesn't leave his face, but his eyes flicker with something else. 

_If only I could read people like Eames does_ , Arthur thinks. He can't tell if the look was loathing or longing. Either way, it makes him have to suppress a shiver.

"There's someone I want you to meet," Kelly says. He gestures behind him, snapping his fingers. 

In a moment they are joined by a young man who can only be Joshua Kelly. He's got his father's dark hair and eyes, but his mouth is softer. He looks terribly small and hunted; his eyes dart around, looking at everything except his father. Finally his eyes come to rest on Arthur. He almost looks away, but then he can't seem to, and he fixes Arthur with an openly curious stare.

"Joshua, this is my business associate, Arthur," Kelly says. 

"Hey," the boy replies, looking down at the floor. He shoves his hands into his pockets, curling his shoulders forward.

Kelly's eyes darken. "That's not how you greet adults," he says. The tone of his voice is a threat.

Suddenly, by the way the boy cringes at his father's stern voice, Arthur can sense years of brow-beating. He's not sure if the boy is physically abused, but he's clearly intimidated. 

Joshua holds out his hand, and Arthur is just as uncomfortable as he is when he takes it. The boy's grip is light, and nearly as cold as his own.

"Good boy," Kelly says, sickeningly sweet. "We'll be doing some business together later. Go back to your party. Find a pretty girl to dance with. In fact I may just have one for you later." He turns his shark-grin back to Arthur.

And Arthur has to restrain himself, with all of his willpower, from breaking Kelly's neck as he thinks of Ariadne, somewhere in this building. _Later, later,_ he soothes himself. 

"Can we please get to business now, Mr. Kelly?" Arthur asks, crisp and unshaken. 

"Have a drink."

"I never drink before a job. And if we're doing this tonight, you shouldn't either. It'll make you sick."

"And you care?" Kelly asks.

"No. I know you're going to want to come under with us to make sure we do the job, or you won't let us leave. If not for that, I'd be glad to let you choke on your own vomit. Now please. Let's talk business."

Kelly's smile doesn't falter this time. He claps Arthur on the shoulder like an old friend. "Nah. Hang around and get to know the Towers. See if you can find anything you like here. Your partner. A way out, maybe. I actually challenge you to find that. In the mean time, you're stuck with me, ain't ya? Try to live up to your reputation." He turns on his heel and leaves.

Arthur perfectly pictures himself tackling this asshole to the ground and bashing his nose into the tile floors. 

_Later. Later._

In the meantime, he waits. Over the course of the next two hours, the bottle-blonde that Kelly had talked up approaches him, asking to dance. He turns her down. The guards stare at him as he walks the perimeter of the room. He ignores them.

At a quarter to two in the morning, he sees Joshua Kelly sitting alone at the bar while the band wraps it up with their last song. Kelly senior is back with the bottle-blonde, seemingly oblivious to his son. And to Arthur.

Arthur tucks the PASIV under his arm and takes a seat next to Joshua. The kid is drinking what looks like gin. Arthur remembers the kind of shit he got up to before his sixteenth birthday, and doesn't comment. The bartender asks what he wants, and he asks for water. Then he glances at the Joshua.

The boy looks at him warily and says, "The fuck you want?"

"To get out of here, honestly."

"So leave."

"Can't."

"Is Kelly blackmailing you or something?"

"He's got my partner."

"Oh. Yeah, I knew something was up the last few days. I saw them drag some guy inside. They tazed him."

Arthur's hand tightens on his glass of water. Then he swivels in his seat so he's facing Joshua. "Where is he now?"

"I don't know, but Kelly never keeps them in the Towers. He has all kinds of places, but he doesn't usually go far. If he's having someone worked over, he's gonna go to a place that's already set up. Torture and other sick shit. And he wonders why I'm fucked in the head. There'll be a shit ton of guards and there'll be only one entrance, usually."

"There's never only one entrance," Arthur says. He's grateful for the tip, but the word "torture" has made him feel murderous. He knows he won't be able to leave the building until he can get Kelly alone, or at least with a few less guards. He puts the PASIV on his lap and asks Joshua, "Do you know what this is?"

The boy tries to scowl, but fails, instead looking a bit pleased. "It's a dream machine. Kelly has one, he thinks he keeps it locked up. Me and my friends nab it once in a while. Better than any high."

"I can't argue that," Arthur says.

"He thinks I'm a fucking idiot, that I don't know what he does. You're that point man. I've heard stories about you."

Arthur doesn't ask what kind of stories. The idea that anyone even knows he exists makes him uncomfortable. Someone sold the team out to Kelly; of this he's certain, and he's back at square one. He keeps coming back to the flight attendant on the Fischer job and he doesn't know why.

"Do you know why Kelly wants my team?" Arthur asks.

"No, and I don't care."

"You should. It's about you." From the corner of his eye, he sees Kelly making his way—hurried now, and angry—over to the both of them. "Shit. Listen. He wants us to incept you. We'll be taking you under. Are you militarized?"

"Am I _what_?"

"It's dream training. Never mind. Your father wants us to change something in your mind, brainwash you. You'll see me in your dream, I'll probably be with a young girl with dark hair. We're going to try to turn it around on him. Do you understand?"

And then Kelly is upon them, his hand clamping down hard into his son's shoulder, his eyes narrowed, thunderous. "What the fuck are you two doing?" he asks, giving his son a hard shake. "Did you look inside that case? Answer me, you little shit." 

When Joshua doesn't answer, Kelly reaches out to grab Arthur.

"Touch me and there will be trouble," Arthur says. Kelly's hand hesitates. "I'll probably lose, but not before I break your arm and let everyone here in on what you're doing."

Kelly keeps his hand extended, as if he's going to reach for the PASIV.

"Think this one through," Arthur says.

Kelly withdraws his hand, curling it into a fist. His teeth are bared, any semblance of a smile gone. "We're doing this now. Joshua, get your ass up to your suite; it's time for your birthday gift." When the boy doesn't move, Kelly nudges him. He's noticed people starting to look their way, so he plasters the false smile on his face again, and clutches his son to him in a friendly hug. "Get going," he growls into the boy's ear.

When Joshua is gone, Arthur says, "Wow. Really, Mr. Kelly. A birthday gift. I have worked with some truly fucking morally bankrupt people, but you have to be the biggest asshole I've ever met in my life. Holy shit."

Kelly edges up to him, crowding him against the bar stool. "It's time," he says. "And if I were you, I'd put a big old smile on my face and go quietly." 

He jams something hard into Arthur's ribs, from under his jacket. The taser or a gun, he doesn't know which, but either way, he knows that Kelly will follow through and call it self defense. Kelly has nothing to lose.

"Then let's get this over with," Arthur says. "I'll need my team."

"You don't need shit," Kelly growls. "Move."

Out of choices—for now—Arthur does as he's told.

 _Soon_ , he promises himself. _Soon._


	4. Chapter 4

The shivering is more exhausting than the pain, Eames thinks; not in so many words, but in visuals. Words have fled, replaced by images of his own body shattering to pieces. The endless ice water they'd held him under, the creative ways they'd gotten it into him. And that fucking cattle prod, which, if he could get enough strength to move, he'd shove clean up someone's ass. 

That possibility dwindles by the minute.

There's no heat in the warehouse and he's long since been relieved of his shirt. Welts sting and drip down his back; blood or water, he's not sure which.

Through his hazy vision, when he's able to open his eyes, he can see Yusuf bound to a chair across from him, head lolling. Yusuf is out like sauerkraut, (he's pretty sure he heard Ariadne use that term once, and now it plays on repeat in his head,) but no one's come in to rough Yusuf up. 

Eames is pretty close to being out like sauerkraut too, except he knows that if he slips under, he'll die. The rope around his neck, which tightens every time he begins to sag, will make sure of that. So he remains on his feet, hands bound behind him, struggling to remain upright. Soon, he thinks, if they keep hurting him, he won't be able to stand, and then he'll choke to death. Which is not the way he'd ever wanted to die, given the choice.

_Arthur will come_ , he thinks. No, he doesn't think: he _knows._

_Unless he's already dead._

But that doesn't make sense, and he refuses to believe it. No, Arthur is alive, and he will come. 

There's a window to his left. He can tell he's at least three stories up in a loft. There's a fire escape going down from the window, too. Arthur will climb through the window and save him and Yusuf. 

Of course Eames knows how unlikely this is, because the fire escape must be surrounded with guards on the ground, too. Arthur's quick with a gun, but not that quick. Maybe in dreams, where bullets are of less consequence. But in real life, Arthur carries a Glock, 17 rounds per magazine; not nearly enough to take on Kelly's mob alone. He'd get shot down on his way in. 

_He'll find a way,_ Eames thinks, nevertheless.

His musing is interrupted by the double doors downstairs in the building banging open. Hurried voices float up to the loft. He picks his head up, looks at Yusuf across from him, to see if the voices have roused him. They have, a little. Yusuf's eyes are open and bleary. He tries to speak to Eames around the gag, but can't.

Two men barrel up the stairs and Eames prepares himself for more of the same. The ice water, that kinky whip of theirs, (Kelly's idea, no doubt,) that ever-fucking cattle prod. 

Instead, they crowd around Yusuf.

"Hey!" Eames tries to shout. It comes out slurred. "Hey, you lot, fuck off! Leave him!" 

Either he's not making himself clear or they're just ignoring him, because they continue to crowd Yusuf. They shuffle around, and Eames hears the faint sound of metal clicking and Yusuf groaning into awareness. And then they're lifting him to his feet and hauling him away, toward the stairs.

"Hey!" Eames tries to shout, and has no follow-up. What? _Don't hurt him? Don't_ kill _him?_ Panic chokes him as much as the rope does, because he understands that he is helpless now, and if they plan on killing Yusuf, there's really nothing he can do to stop them. 

_I'm kinder to women than to men_ , he thinks, remembering Kelly's message that seems ages ago. He hadn't believed it then, and he doesn't now. These people have nothing good in store for any of them.

** ** **

The first thing Arthur sees when he is ushered into Joshua's room isn't an escape route in the form of a vent, window, or fire escape, nor the number of goons with guns, nor the layout of the room, nor places where he can take cover if it comes to that.

The first thing he sees is Ariadne. He watches her face flood with relief, and quickly takes in the rest of her appearance. She's wearing a ridiculous, fire-engine red low-backed dress with a slit up the side all the way to New Jersey, and a strange, high collar. He remembers the odd looking bauble around her neck from the blurry picture he'd seen.

Then she's running to him, throwing her arms around his neck, and his own relief makes him cling to her. She's all right. For now, she's fine and he squeezes her tight.

"Oh Arthur," she says, "Arthur, you're all right. Oh my god. Jesus! Look at me!" She pulls away, holding him by the arms, her face earnest, angry. " _Look_ at me. This stupid fucking dress. I'm – I'm humiliated. They, they made me wear this! Can you believe that shit, can you even believe it? I look like some kind of call girl. I _hate_ this. Where's Cobb? Where is _Eames_?"

Before Arthur can answer any of her outrages and and questions, Kelly shuts the door behind him and reveals the gun he'd kept under his jacket as he had walked Arthur up to the room. The rest of the guards have their guns all trained on Arthur, too. There are four of them, plus Kelly. Joshua is lying on the bed, already unconscious. He has no idea what they injected him with.

"Now that we're all here," Kelly says. 

He pushes past Arthur and gets between him and Ariadne. He strokes one hand up her arm and the muzzle of his gun down her cheek.

"Get your fucking hands off me," she says. "Does this give you some kind of sick thrill? You have _issues_ , Mr. Kelly."

"Let's get started," Arthur says, trying to defuse the bomb that Ariadne has just set with her words. He sits next to Joshua, clicks open the PASIV and checks the boy's pulse. It's strong and steady. "I'll need the rest of my team, so if you can..."

"As I said," Kelly answers, his attention finally called away from Ariadne, "you're not getting the rest of your team. You're not doing this with us."

Arthur scowls at him, sets the PASIV down and stands up. "Then why the fuck did you bring us here?"

"I was lacking a vital piece of information about you and your partner. You're not the man I want going into my son's mind."

"You..." _are a son of a mongrel bitch_ , is what Arthur is about to say, but he does not get the chance. The door opens again, and two more goons drag a third man between them. The man tries to get his feet under him but is clearly too sedated to walk on his own. His dark mass of curls obscures his features, but Arthur knows him immediately. He's instantly glad to see Yusuf alive, and, following that, his blood turns to ice when he sees that Eames is not with them.

"Where the fuck..." he begins, but he doesn't finish that thought, either.

"Tie him up, we're saving him for later," Kelly says, pointing to Arthur. Then he turns he eyes to Yusuf. "And put him up against the wall."

_Execution style_ , Arthur thinks. They're going to make him and Ariadne watch, to show them how serious they are.

The guards converge on him, and Arthur carefully, carefully takes in what they plan to do with him before he makes any moves. In under a second he sees that they aren't holding any syringes, and instead are coming at him with two pairs of handcuffs. None of them are actually raising their hands or guns toward him. They really do mean to save him for later. They'll probably take him to where they're keeping Eames, and make him watch that, too. But he fears that by then it will be too late. And Yusuf will already be dead. 

One of them drags a chair from the kitchenette and pulls it up behind him. Arthur gets what they're doing. 

Two pairs of handcuffs and a chair. 

He puts the PASIV down on the bed, raises his hands in surrender, and seats himself in the chair before they can shove him into it. He makes brief eye contact with Ariadne, then looks to the corner of the room. Perhaps she hasn't worked with him long enough to get his signals, but he hopes that she will.

To his relief, she shoves past Kelly and goes to stand in the corner, behind a high-backed loveseat, looking as afraid as she should. She doesn't need to pretend. 

Good. She's out of the way.

The guards shove Yusuf against the far wall. He's out of the way, too.

They handcuff Arthur's hands to the chair. He knows they're not going to stop there; they'll do his ankles, too, and obviously they'll put a guard at the door, if he waits any longer. So, it's now or never.

In one explosive move, Arthur draws up his knees so that he's standing on the seat of the chair, hunched over, wrists still attached to the chair's arms. Then he tips the chair backwards, balancing for half a second on the back of it until it hits the floor. He's on his feet, with the chair chained to his wrists, in front of him. 

He swings it with everything he has. 

The chair crashes into the face and shoulder of the first goon who had handcuffed him. He whips it the other way, hitting the second goon. This time, the chair splinters. 

"Fuck!" someone—probably Kelly—shouts, and a bullet shatters the seat of the chair as he ducks to the side. Ariadne screams, and Arthur just hopes like hell she's crouching down or finding cover. 

Goon number three, to his right, gets it in the nose with the remnants of the chair-frame; it splinters and breaks again, this time in half.

Now he's got nothing but the two arms of the chair attached to the metal handcuffs. The reach, weight and momentum of this makeshift weapon is exactly what he needs.

He whips one behind him, hears a crunch, feels the hot spray of blood on the back of his neck. Gunfire again, and he hits the ground, belly-crawls a foot or so, and grabs the gun from one of the fallen guards. Flips onto his back and starts firing. He plugs the fourth goon in the shoulder, and gets one of the ones who had dragged in Yusuf. In the thigh, that one gets it.

Another gunshot, and this one hits the carpet an inch to the side of his head. Arthur's gun clicks empty. The last goon stands above him, preparing to fire again. Desperate, Arthur launches up to his feet and tackles him. He uses the metal of the handcuff to crack the side of the guy's skull.

Kelly shoots, and this one hits him; he knows because his arm burns ice cold and he can feel the nerves going dead and knows that this is going to hurt like a bitch in just a few seconds. Already he can feel the blood gushing down to the crook of his elbow. He turns to aim at Kelly. 

But he can't shoot him, because he fucking _needs_ him still. Kelly knows where Eames is.

He and Kelly stand facing each other, guns aimed.

And then he hears Ariadne's voice saying, "Put the gun down, Kelly."

Arthur can barely see her behind Kelly; she's so tiny she barely comes up to his shoulder. She shoves something into his back. Kelly smiles.

"You won't kill me, Ariadne," he says.

"I _will_ shoot you," Ariadne says. "Drop the gun!" 

As Kelly, still smiling, looks over his shoulder at her, Arthur swings his makeshift weapon. The sound it makes is * _whup_ * as it cuts the air, and then * _crack_ * as it hits the side of Kelly's jaw.

When Kelly drops to the ground, Ariadne standing is behind him, pointing an open bottle of champagne. It shakes in time with the trembling of her hand. Her eyes are wide, but she offers a weak smile. "I hear this was a good year," she says, putting the bottle on the table. "Arthur, Jesus, you're hit. Let me see."

"It's fine," he says. "Go lock the door then check Yusuf, make sure he's all right. We have work to do."

She doesn't fuss, she doesn't ask questions, she just does as she's asked. He hears her murmuring to Yusuf as she walks him over to the bed. Meanwhile, Arthur plucks the earpiece from one of the fallen goons and takes a listen. No one's asking if they need backup. They must not have heard the gunfire. He thinks they've probably got a few minutes.

Arthur sits beside Yusuf, takes his chin in his hand and checks his eyes. Yusuf barely registers him, but manages to say, "Eames."

"Where is he? Yusuf, I need to know."

"Couldn't..." Yusuf says. "They kept me blindfolded when they moved me." He gasps, then snaps to life, suddenly alert. "Arthur," he says. "I saw Eames. They're going to kill him. I don't know where. I don't know! They had me drugged. Blindfolded!"

"All right," Arthur says, relinquishing Yusuf to Ariadne. "All right." He paces, thinking. The handcuffs on his wrists rattle, the chair-slats thudding against his legs. "All right, six unconscious fucking thugs." He wishes he hadn't knocked them all out. Of the two who had dragged Yusuf in, one of them is bleeding very quickly from the wound in his thigh. He probably won't make it. But they wouldn't have told him anything anyway. Anything he could threaten them with, surely Kelly would have more of a hold over them. Kelly must know where their families are, and they would fear Kelly's retribution more than anything Arthur could threaten. No, he had to take them out.

Kelly is his only option. His only way to Eames. 

And Kelly will never tell him.

Arthur glances at the PASIV.

"Ariadne," he says, "I need your help."

"Anything," she says. "But, Arthur. There's something you need to see, first."

She leaves Yusuf on the bed and approaches him, unhooking the ridiculous high collar of her dress. Something about this makes Arthur very, very nervous. Ariadne slips the collar down to reveal the gaudy looking metal thing he'd seen around her neck in the photograph. The thing that looked like it glowed too bright to be gems.

It's the farthest thing from gems. It is, from what he can see, some kind of tracking device locked around her neck. Four colored, glowing buttons run across the front of it: red, green, blue, yellow. It's unlike any tracking device he's ever seen.

"I can get that off you."

"No," she says, a little too quick. "It's not what you think it is. It's... it's some kind of device that's rigged to explode if I try to... Oh my god, Arthur, it's so _sick_." And finally, after all of this, there are tears in her eyes. She wipes them away hastily and takes a deep breath. "There's a code. It's like... it's like Simon Sez or something!"

"And Kelly knows the code," Arthur says. He runs his fingers across the front of the device, smearing blood that he quickly tries to wipe away. He can feel the seam when his fingers get to the back and he wants to rip the fucking thing off of her and stuff it into Kelly's open mouth, and then detonate it.

"Yes," she says. "He does."

"That's two things I need from him." Arthur sighs. Later, he will be exhausted. Later, his arm will hurt. But now, he knows what he has to do.

"So, here's what I need, Ariadne," he says. "You have to stay topside with Yusuf and that kid there. Keep track of these goons' earpieces. If any of them start to come around, or if you hear anything, _anything_ , kick me awake."

"You're going _under_?" she asks. 

"I have to take Kelly under." 

He peels his jacket off, painfully, wincing, and gets stuck when he gets to the handcuffs and chair-bits. Ariadne kneels down and retrieves the key from one of the guards. Her fingers are steady as she frees him from them, and helps him slip the jacket the rest of the way off. 

"You're going to try to extract from him?" she asks. 

"I have to. He knows the combination to that detonator he's got on you. And he knows where Eames is. I'm not half the extractor that Cobb is, but I learned from him."

"Kelly will be militarized," Yusuf offers, groggy, but sitting up on the bed.

"Yeah, I'm prepared." 

Arthur rolls up his sleeve and sits on the bed next to Yusuf. He pulls the PASIV closer. It's his right arm that's bleeding like crazy, and he's getting blood everywhere. Yusuf reaches out a shaky hand to help him, swiping the blood away, tearing open the enclosed alcohol packet and rubbing down his wrist.

"How bad is Eames?" Arthur asks quietly, as Yusuf pulls the line from the PASIV.

"I wasn't awake much," Yusuf says. "But, from what I remember, not good I'm afraid." His shaky fingers cause him to stab Arthur clumsily a few times as he tries to slip the cannula in. "Does the boy know where he is?" he nods toward Joshua, still unconscious on the bed.

Arthur steadies Yusuf's hand and shakes his head.

"Shit," Yusuf says.

Down on the floor, Ariadne is crouched over Kelly, rifling through his jacket. After a moment, she pulls out his phone. "Maybe he's got something on here," she offers. "Yusuf, go through it while we're under?"

"We?" Arthur asks.

"I'm going with you," Ariadne says. Her tone brooks no argument. "You need me to build so you can extract. You can't do both; you're a mess. Listen, here's the plan. Yusuf, set the PASIV so that Kelly gets the highest dose; sedate the shit out of him. Put me under a little less. And put Arthur least of all."

"I'm not going to let you..." Arthur begins.

"Shut up and listen. You have to be able to wake up quickly if anyone comes in. You're the one with the gun and the ninja fighting shit or whatever." She turns back to Yusuf. "Don't listen to Arthur, trust me on this one. Put him in a _light_ sleep. If you have to kick him awake, he'll jump right out of it."

Arthur has to admit that it makes sense. He doesn't have to be too far under to extract. Cobb could pull it off easily, and he's trained under him, after all.

Ariadne drags Kelly closer to the bed so the PASIV line will reach. Expertly, she hooks Kelly up. Then she hooks herself up, while Yusuf fiddles with the doses.

"Arthur," Yusuf says. "Hurry."

"I will," he promises.

Yusuf presses the button, and Arthur falls, for a moment backwards onto the bed, and then miles, and miles, and miles into Kelly's ugly, dark mind.

** ** **

He opens his eyes to a damp hallway that looks endless. Ariadne is beside him. She's dreamed herself into sensible clothes: jeans and a loose-fitting shirt. Arthur has dreamed himself exactly as he was when he went under, complete with blood dripping down his arm. The drawbacks of being so close to the surface. The arm burns, too, a hot, dark pain that's not nearly as bad as it probably feels topside.

"You all right?" Ariadne asks.

"Yeah. You?"

She takes a deep breath. "I'm good. We're here. We can do this."

He smiles at her. She's been to limbo and pulled it together at the last minute. He's glad to have her by his side.

"Now we improvise," she says.

"You sound like Eames. Improvising is great when there's no other choice, but we have a moment before we start. So now we plan."

She shifts, looking dubious. "Okay. The best laid plans and all. What have you got?"

"Give me a quick rundown of what you constructed."

"It's like with Fischer," she says. "Only it's the inside of the Towers. The layout of the maze is the same, but the décor is gonna be what he decides. Except that I didn't use the suite we were just in, because I thought that was too close to the present."

"Looks like we're in the basement now, or something."

"A room that leads from the parking garage," she says. "I put a safe in his private room."

"You saw his suite?"

"That's where he kept me for a while. It's where I had to get into that, that _ridiculous_ dress, under the threat of him killing Eames. He showed me pictures, Arthur. I didn't want to tell you."

"I saw one," he says, aware of how crackly his voice suddenly sounds. "Did he... I mean, Kelly didn't touch you or anything?"

"He didn't," she says. "He just made me look like a whore. But no, it was weird. He was very... I don't know, chaste with me or something. Not chaste, but disinterested. He wanted to hurt my feelings. That seemed to be about it."

"I'm sorry," Arthur says.

"Hey, no big. My feelings weren't actually hurt. You can't really be hurt by someone who makes you want to spew your lunch."

"What, are you saying he's not your type?" Arthur jokes, trying to rid himself of images of Eames being tormented, Ariadne being fetishized. "Come on, handsome guy like that?"

She sneers in disgust. "The man's a disease. I wouldn't touch him with someone _else's_ vagina."

Arthur chuckles at that, and covers his mouth so it doesn't echo down the hallway.

"So, what do we do?" she asks.

"I thought I'd need you to distract him while I get to the safe. Now I'm not so sure I even want you to be here. Not because of you, but because of, you know. What you just told me."

"He can't hurt me, Arthur," she says.

"He can. I know you've done this all before, but I've done it for years and let me tell you. Dreams can hurt. Thoughts can hurt."

"I know," she says, laying a hand on his arm. "But I won't give him that power. The only problem is, I don't think I _could_ distract him. He's not interested in me."

Arthur looks down the hall, where he thinks he can see shadows moving. "Okay, here's what we do. We go in a little further and see how the projections act. It's probably going to be ugly. He's militarized. You'll have to really know the maze."

"I do."

"And if they start to shoot, and it comes down to me or you, let me take the bullet, okay? I'll just come right back under. Without you, the dream will collapse."

"Got it."

They set off walking down the dark, fetid hallway. It's lit with small, yellowish light that glares sickly from between crevasses in the walls. The walls themselves shine with some sort of wetness that he can't exactly place. It's not blood—he'd smell it if it was—but something else familiar. 

"Speaking of vaginas," Ariadne says, "I feel like we're in one. A huge wet one."

"Jesus, Ariadne." And since it's nothing more than a dream, he reaches his hand out to the wall and touches the shining substance. It's slick and smooth, just like...

A pointed, gleaming shaft of solid white crashes out from a crevasse, nearly impaling his hand, and shoots to the other side of the hall. It buries itself in the opposite wall. Ariadne, who jumped back with a split second left, stares at it. 

"What the fuck?" she says, shaken.

Another shaft juts out from the opposite wall, and this time they both have to leap out of the way.

"Teeth!" Ariadne says. "Jesus, _run!_ "

Arthur can currently think of very few worse ways of dying slowly in a dream—impalement is always so traumatic—and he runs, hand in hand with Ariadne, as those wet, slimy bars thrust from one wall to the other in their wake. 

Not just militarized, this Kelly, but fucking booby trapped, and pathologically so.

When they reach the end of the hall, it opens up to a wider, brighter passageway that is still lit with the same dull, yellow light. For a moment, Arthur feels strangely blank, lightheaded and maybe a little faint. His arm is still pouring blood, and now it feels like something is prodding at it, some invisible presence tormenting the torn skin. 

"You okay?" Ariadne asks.

"Yeah. I think Yusuf's trying to bandage me, topside. It's the part of being so close to the surface that kind of sucks. I can feel him. I can actually almost hear him, if I pay enough attention."

"That's good," she says. "Not that it hurts, but that you'll know if someone else comes in."

"Maybe. But it also breaks my concentration here. I'll have to crack that safe, when..."

He doesn't finish the thought, as Kelly's projections seem to ooze out of the crevasses in the slick walls. It's disorienting, in that most of them look like some variation of Kelly himself, or at least the archetype. Dark-haired, tanned, white teeth, dominant. Arthur watches them warily for a moment, and they watch him back. None of them seem to notice Ariadne. He keeps his hand on the Glock, awaiting fire. If they shoot him awake, he'll just go the fuck back under, is all.

But they don't. Shoving Ariadne out of the way, three projections converge on him. He backs up, cautious, waiting them out. If he shoots first, he'll only call Kelly's attention down on him. Better to see how they react to him, first.

The first projection shoves him back against the wall and presses him up against it. This action, being the last thing he'd expected, shocks him momentarily, and he knows he can't shoot yet, can't, _shouldn't_. His hair catches on the craggy wall, actually sticks to the slick substance there, which smells like rot and shame and fear, _Kelly's_ fear. The first projection crowds him, almost ruts on him, and runs a hand up his side. There's a second in which he can't breathe, as if Kelly is infecting his lungs. He can hear Ariadne calling to him. The second and third projections flank him, and one gingerly touches his hair, curious. The other touches the wound on his arm, as if testing for pain. 

"Christ, _fuck_ ," he says, and pulls the Glock. He fires at the first one, the one that's pressed against him, which is staring him in the eyes with that childlike, curious gaze. He hits it in the gut, and it crumbles. 

Then he fires at the second one, and the third. They drop like dolls. There are two more coming closer, and he shoots those down, too. Not exactly how he wanted to sneak into Kelly's mind.

He's breathing hard now, rattled, completely understanding of what just happened. He wants to shower and shower for days. He's about to wipe down his arms, as if cleaning the disgust off, but then becomes aware of Ariadne's eyes on him. Earnest concern, and a little afraid to ask. She does anyway.

"Are you okay?" Her voice sounds small.

He swallows hard, takes a breath. "Yeah. I'm fine. No harm done. I just got groped inside a giant vagina but I think I'll live."

She attempts a laugh. He wants to smooth down his hair, but is afraid to touch it, with that nasty wall-stuff on it. For so many reasons, he can't fucking wait until this is over. 

They walk further in, keeping to tunnels that Ariadne's created; ones that hopefully Kelly's vigilant mind won't be able to find so quickly. The safe is in Kelly's suite. Kelly himself will probably be there, too. How to get inside? How to get past him? Arthur's very nearly afraid of what he might have to do it if they can't lure him out.

All at once he feels a presence that's not in the dream. It's in the real world: something hovering over him, so that he can almost feel breath on his face, in his hair, down his neck. And he almost hears a murmuring voice. He's so exquisitely sensitive to the real world in this dream, it's filtering in.

_Yusuf?_ he thinks. 

But it doesn't feel like Yusuf. He senses something different.

A sudden pressure on the injured arm is so sharp it almost makes him cry out in the dream. He jerks back.

"Arthur?" Ariadne asks.

An invisible hand brushes over his forehead, solicitous, gentle.

"Someone's touching me," he says. He lays his own hand across his forehead, as if he can feel the other hand there. There's nothing but dream-space. His skin tingles.

"Yusuf is probably..."

"No. It's not him. But it doesn't feel... ill intended, I think. Yusuf would have kicked me awake if someone else had come in."

"Joshua?" she says, her voice soft.

"I doubt it." He considers this for a moment. The feeling of the ghost-hand is gone from his forehead, in a whisper that briefly tugs through his hair. "Let's just move on and see what happens."

"Right," she says, wary. And then, "I feel warm, all of a sudden."

"It's sticky in here," Arthur says. "Humid. Really fucking gross."

They make their way to the first level elevator. It's an old style one, with rattly metal doors and a needle that points to the floor it's on. They both watch the needle drop to the "B" level. Ariadne takes his arm and they enter the elevator.

It's barely up to level 1 when it grinds to a halt. 

"I didn't make it do that," Ariadne says. "I'm sorry! I don't know why it stopped."

"The projections are fucking with it, that's why. The upper level ones, probably. Not these low-level cretins. Kelly knows we're here. He's playing."

Through the grating, Arthur can see over the top of the floor, to the first level.

"What's up there?" Ariadne asks.

"More of the same." 

Kelly's projections swarm, and in seconds they are over, on, and in front of the stuck elevator, jamming long, leathery fingers through the grating. Ariadne pulls to the center, where they're less likely to reach her, and waits it out.

Arthur just starts firing.

"I left some big fucking guns behind the front desk!" Ariadne shouts over the sound of gunfire. "I thought we'd make it this far without any trouble!"

"We'll get there," Arthur promises. They'd be sitting ducks in this elevator if any of these projections were actually formed. These seem to be remnants of subconscious; little scraps of memory and desire, reaching for them. Malformed, curious little Id-driven deviants. He fires until they're all dead.

There's one slumped and bleeding over the top of the elevator. It drips onto Ariadne's shoulder and she wipes the blood away negligently. 

"Help me pull these doors open," he asks her. 

They each grab a door and pull. Slowly, the bars grate apart. One of the projections that he'd wasted had been propped up there, and it falls into the elevator and lands face up, its eyes no different from when it had been a functioning part of Kelly's subconscious.

Ariadne pulls herself up and over the ledge, onto the first floor. Arthur follows.

The reception area here is that same bleary, dark yellow. In the distance, across the room and blocked by high furniture and columns arranged like a maze, Arthur can see the doors to the main hall where Kelly had just held his son's sixteenth birthday party.

They head back behind the desk and grab the guns that she's dreamed there (he wonders if she knows exactly what this "big fucking gun" is; if she has any idea how rare it is in the real world, and then decides it doesn't matter because it was cool of her to dream it up for them either way.)

When they get into the first hall, the projections become less Id and more trained. This is what Arthur has been expecting. They work with tasers, with traps, and devices aside from guns. And a group of them are coming down the hall.

"This way!" Ariadne says, pulling Arthur out of the path of a laser-light just before it shatters the wall beside him. She pulls him into one of her many rooms and says, "Oh!" when she sees what's inside her intricate maze.

In this suite, Kelly's subconscious is hard at work – though not on either of them. This projection of Kelly has its bleached-out, veneered teeth buried deep in the thigh of another one of his own projections, and its hand down its own pants. Blood runs down its chin as it turns glazed eyes to the two of them. 

Ariadne's grip on his arm tightens and he can feel her getting ready to bolt. The projection pulls a gun out of its pants and Arthur shifts to the side.

And then the unmistakable sound of a silenced gun thuds out a whispered report. Blood oozes out from what looks like a sudden third eye in the projection's forehead. Its mouth falls open, releasing its grip on the other projection. 

A second shot takes that one out, too.

But neither of them had fired.

"Arthur, did you...?"

"I didn't even move," he says.

_Someone is down here with us._

She groans, partly for effect, but mostly in genuine fear. "We're in a haunted brain. You know that, right?"

"Let's move on," he says.

They shoot indiscriminately now as they head toward the stairs. Kelly already knows they're on their way, so the element of surprise is gone. As Arthur fires in short bursts and the projections drop, he tries to think of a way to make Kelly give up the information without trickery. Normally he has no stomach for torture, and perhaps no imagination for it, either. But maybe if he thinks of that picture of Eames, he can come up with something suitably threatening. If he gets desperate enough.

One of the projections drops down from the ceiling, already dead. 

The dream goes mostly quiet. Arthur's ears ring with the sudden silence. Then, from behind the closed doors, he can hear the distinct sounds of people crying out. A whip cracking repeatedly. It's Kelly, acting out his shame, his fantasy, on himself.

He hears a strangled cry from Ariadne, and when he turns to fire, sees nothing to fire at. Only her, clutching at her throat, losing her balance and tipping backwards. Her feet scrabble for purchase against the floor.

He grabs her hand to pull her back toward him, but her backwards momentum jerks him forward: something is dragging her. 

And then he sees it. A wire garrote around her neck, cutting into her skin. He can't pull her without strangling her, and slowly at that.

She tries to say his name as her fingers scramble to pull the wire free. Arthur follows the wire with his eyes and sees that it leads up to the ceiling, a piece of which has been knocked out. One of the projections, this one looking remarkably like Kelly himself, is up there in the ceiling, yanking on the wire that's now cutting into her neck.

Arthur takes aim.

But again, the projection is dead before he can pull the trigger. He sees it slump forward, and he grabs Ariadne and pulls her out of the way of its fall.

She's crying in earnest as she falls with him. He unwinds the garrote from around her neck, and together they slide to the floor, leaning up against the wall. She's bleeding from a shallow, straight line across her neck, and for a second, she just rests against his shoulder, trying to regain her cool. 

"At least it wasn't the vagina with teeth," he says, gauging the cut around her neck clinically.

She chokes out a pained sound. "Don't make me laugh, asshole, it hurts."

"This is one sick..." he begins, but doesn't finish the thought.

Another Kelly-projection comes from behind one of the closed doors. There's no time for him to grab the Big Fucking Gun with her leaning against him, and instead he reaches for the Glock.

"There's a wolf," the projection says. "A wolf among my flock." Then the projection drops to the floor. The back of its head is missing.

"What the fuck," Ariadne croaks out.

"I have no idea," Arthur admits. He's seen all kinds of shit, because every dream is new, and he knows by now to expect anything. But he thinks he's never been inside a mind this twisted. A mind where projections speak in riddles before deciding to blink out. "Are you all right to go on?"

She nods, swallowing against the pain, and together they stand up and dust themselves off.

Their only company as they move toward the suite is the sound of metal on skin, leather on skin, teeth on skin, and the accompanying cries. And, occasionally, a vague shadow ahead of them.

It isn't until Ariadne leads him to the suite that Arthur understands why it's been so quiet. The door is open; Kelly's suite is empty. Kelly has been behind them, aware of them and following, probably since the hallway.

Arthur feels the presence ( _slime, shame, hatred_ ,) and turns slowly to face him. He gives Ariadne's arm a subtle squeeze, though he's not entirely sure yet what he's signaling her to do.

"Arthur," Kelly says, all white teeth and shark grin.

Arthur doesn't deign to answer. 

"I know we're dreaming. I know you took me down here without my boy. Were you hoping to change my mind about him?" He walks closer, trying to make Arthur stand down. "Or about killing your partner, perhaps? What time is it in the awake world, Arthur? Do you know I've got your partner on a really tight leash?"

Ariadne is behind Arthur, and so is the suite with the safe. He has no idea if Ariadne can extract. How will she even break into it? Cobb hadn't taught her anything about the actual extractions. Still, if he can divert Kelly's attention long enough, she could at least try. It's all he's got to work with. 

Slowly, he angles his shoulders away from Kelly, and takes a step back. This allows Kelly into his space, and makes him think that he's the one in charge. As Arthur had expected, Kelly tries to circle him like an alpha dog marking its territory. Arthur lets him, and turns until he's facing the suite, and Kelly has his back to it.

And then Ariadne is gone. 

"I brought you down here to leave you here," Arthur says. "You're clearly trained in dreaming, but not trained enough. You had no idea what you were getting into. Did you?"

Kelly still looks far too smug. "What, limbo? I know all about it. I have men trained to get me out of it if anyone should ever try to leave me there."

"I guess you don't remember me taking out all of your thugs while chained to a chair. No one's going to come and get you, Kelly."

Kelly's smile doesn't falter as he lunges at Arthur, much in the same way his most basic projections had, and shoves him against the wall. "Shoot me, then. Send me to limbo." His breath is hot, damp like the rest of his dream. "Or was that another bluff? Because if you shoot, I'll just wake up."

Disgusted, Arthur still does his best not to flinch away. "You won't. I sedated you. You'll drop further down."

"So do it. Drop me. Or is there something that you want from me? To know where your partner is, before time runs out?"

"I don't have to drop you," Arthur says. "I just have to hurt you enough."

He jerks his knee up into Kelly's groin, the sound of it making even him wince. When Kelly doubles over, Arthur shoots him in the knee with the Glock – he knows from experience how much that hurts. Kelly cries out and collapses onto his side, clutching his bloody leg. Arthur feels a momentary thrill of something like righteousness. He leans down on one knee and plucks Kelly's gun from the inside of his jacket. Then he presses the Glock to his other knee.

"My employer was an extractor, Mr. Kelly," he says. "The best in the business. Me, I was always just a point man. I get things done outside of dreams." He's stalling for time and hopes that Kelly doesn't catch on. Ariadne hasn't returned yet or even given him a sign that she's found anything. "So I have a tendency to deal with things the same way under as I do topside. You know. Guns and shit." It's not even close to being true, but he knows he's got some kind of reputation that he can work with.

"You gonna make me talk, boss?" Kelly asks, still grinning.

Arthur looks him in the eye and says, "Yes. I am."

And that's when Kelly hits him with the taser he's kept hidden in the other side of the jacket. 

It seems like an eternity in which Arthur tries to fight back, but can't unlock any of his joints, with what feels like lightning sizzling his bones. An eternity until he falls limp, backwards away from Kelly, and loses his grip on the Glock.

"FUCK!" he hears himself shout, his head buzzing, limbs shaking and anger coursing through him.

He thinks _He did this to Eames, awake._ Through the buzzing in his head he hears Kelly still laughing, and that makes him turn over to get up. He bashes his injured arm on the floor, grunts in pain and pushes himself to his knees. He throws himself on top of Kelly and grips him by the throat, all semblance of cool professionalism gone.

"You made the biggest fucking mistake," he says. The growl in his own voice doesn't sound out of place; it makes him sharper. Through the flashing halo in his vision, Kelly's teeth seem to glow as he grins, and grins, and grins. Arthur clamps his hand tighter, squeezing his windpipe, needing to feel it crush like paper.

"Arthur!" A voice nearly breaks through the haze of anger. Ariadne. "Arthur! Stop! Don't kill him! Don't _wake_ him! We got it!"

He slowly releases his grip from Kelly's throat. His hand is cramping, nerves jumping as if the voltage is still going through him. 

"Arthur, Arthur!" A man's voice, now, he realizes through the haze. Familiar, too. However unlikely it seems, he's got to venture a glance.

Cobb is making his way toward him, looking paternally concerned, and carrying his Beretta with the silencer still attached.

_A wolf among my flock..._

When Cobb lays a hand on his shoulder, it's as if he releases the pressure valve of anger. It floods out of his body in a ragged breath. Arthur realizes that he's almost just woken Kelly before the rest of them, _fuck_ what a stupid thing to do.

"Come on, come on," Cobb urges, pulling him off of Kelly, who is gasping in harsh, grating breaths.

_...on a tight leash..._ he remembers him saying about Eames. And then he turns and kicks Kelly in the ribs. This time, Cobb lets him.

"All right?" Cobb asks. "Come on now, let's get out of here."

"Did you get it?" Arthur asks, surprised by how rough he sounds. "He's got Eames, and he's got this thing on Ariadne..."

"I got everything, and more." Cobb gives his uninjured arm a light squeeze. "Sorry I took so long. I needed a lot from him. Come on; let's get out of here. I'll go up first and kick you awake."

Cobb's always been really easy about waking himself, and he seems to fall right back into his old ways, calmly putting the gun to his temple and pulling the trigger. Ariadne jumps when he blows his brains out, but Arthur is used to it.

"Hey," she says, reaching out toward Arthur.

But then the world tilts. He's thrown backwards, and before he hits the ground, he opens his eyes to see Cobb's burning blue gaze, fierce and bright, searching him out.

 

** ** **

In his mind, Eames is back on the train with Arthur, sharing his iPod with him. Rachmaninoff. Arthur's hand tapping out the rhythm, air-conducting. How the tension had bled out of him once the music played. _"I never really heard this before..."_ Briefly, he thinks of their time in the hotel room (" _I'm fairly plain..."_ ) but it's really the train ride that sticks with him the most.

Soon, he guesses, he'll get around to thinking about his Mum and Dad, and his childhood. First loves. Getting involved in the dream business. Forging. All the other stuff that one is supposed to reflect upon when it looks like the end is quite fucking nigh. But not yet. For now, it's just Arthur on the train.

The pain seems to belong to someone else, which isn't so bad, although hazily he suspects it's because he's losing consciousness. The more that happens, the more the rope cuts into his neck. And the more it cuts into his neck, the more tenuous is his grasp on consciousness. He's aware of the cycle. Even the blood dripping down his back doesn't seem to be his own.

His captors discuss him in neutral tones, blithely wondering what time it is, how long until they should start again. A while back, he'd fought them, bloodied a few as well. A well-timed head-butt, a kick to the ribs when he'd still had enough balance not to strangle himself. Later, he'd attempted engaging them in conversation; a great tactic, usually, to deal with torturers. Get them to see you as a person. In Eames's case, under the best of circumstances, he can often get people to see him as any person he wants to be, even awake. This, however, isn't the best of circumstances. They had ignored him, with ice around the edges. These are no amateurs. 

_Ice_ , he wishes he hadn't thought of the ice. The cold is the worst; he feels numb all over; muscles stretched tight and turned to stone.

A loud blast of noise rouses him from his semi-coherent musings. Shattering glass in the distance, the two tormentors rising, shouting. And more shattering glass. Endless shattering glass.

Eames turns his head as far as he is able toward the window (he's grown tired of looking at it; it offers him no hope of escape that he can see,) and then he knows he's hallucinating, because he can see Arthur across the way. Arthur, standing somehow among shards of glass, wind whipping his hair into disarray. He disappears momentarily, but Eames's two captors seem real enough, and they both take off running down the stairs, calling, " _backup, backup_ " while he stares out the window with the fire escape. 

He'd seen Arthur. He knows he had. Just for a moment.

Reality twists on him when he sees him yet again. Arthur, standing on a ledge of broken glass. Arthur, backing up, going blurry in the distance (Eames's eyesight is usually pretty good; but without enough blood to his brain, he can't see into the distance for shit.)

And then, with great relief, he realizes that he's dreaming. They've only tortured him in dreams. Maybe his real body is fine, hooked up somewhere and waiting for him. He _can_ remember how he got here (taser, being dragged inside and strung up,) but this can't be real. 

This can't be real.

Because Arthur is flying toward him. 

That's just it; it's a dream and Arthur is fucking with gravity and is flying toward him.

It doesn't explain why he's not feeling the effects of the strange gravity, unless this is just his projection of Arthur.

But it also doesn't explain why he drops out of sight at the last second.


	5. Chapter 5

Arthur rarely wakes up disoriented, but the first thing he does on seeing Cobb is reach for his totem. He only has to feel around on it to assure himself that he's awake. He sits up.

Cobb surprises him utterly by sweeping him into a one-armed embrace. He hasn't been demonstrative like this since before Mal died, and the gesture has Arthur reaching for the totem yet again, just to make sure.

"You all right?" Cobb asks.

Arthur looks down at himself. His shirt has been removed, his arm cleaned, and the shirt put back on. It's not buttoned all the way up. He looks around the room next.

Ariadne is sitting up on the bed, Cobb's jacket around her shoulders ( _"I feel warm," he remembers her saying.) Joshua is sitting on the bed, awake now, eyeing them all warily, his knees pulled up to his chest. Kelly is still under. Yusuf is giving some kind of victorious half-grin._

All Arthur can come up with is, "What?" and thinks maybe he's lost enough blood to feel light-headed.

"I found Kelly's voicemail threat to Cobb on his cell phone," Yusuf says. "As Cobb was already on his way, I just directed him to the room."

"How did you even get past the guards?" Arthur asks Cobb.

"I was on the guest list, just like you," Cobb says. "And Joshua let me in."

Ariadne scoots over next to Arthur and says, "Dom's got Eames's location and the code to get this thing off my neck. We can go."

"Where's Eames?" Arthur asks Cobb. He thinks his eyes must look too wide, because they feel like they are. 

"Not far," Cobb says. "Also, judging by what I saw in there, we don't have a hell of a lot of time to get there. Ariadne. Let's get you free."

Arthur stands up and finishes buttoning his shirt, then grabs his jacket off the back of a chair. It's still bloody. Ariadne turns to Cobb, and his fingers carefully tap at the lights in a pattern he's already memorized. Cobb's the best at remembering what another person's mind told him; still, the entire room holds its breath as he does this. The device beeps twice, then clicks as all the lights light up at once. With a sound like the freeing of a clasp, it opens up around her neck and comes free.

Arthur breathes out deeply, as does everyone else. Ariadne bites her knuckle to stifle a small cry, then throws her arms around Cobb's neck. For a moment he freezes, and then pats her clumsily.

"We have to get Eames," Cobb says. "I just haven't figured out how to get past the guards yet. When the PASIV's timer runs out, Kelly will follow us. But before he does, he'll probably order the hit on Eames."

"I can keep him under," Joshua says, his voice small from the corner of the bed where he's made himself very tiny.

"No," Cobb says. "He's your father."

"Fuck him," Joshua answers. "Do you even know what he wanted to do to me?"

"I know," Cobb says. "Still. No. We need to find another..."

"Hand me that device," Arthur says, indicating the metal neck-ring in Cobb's hands.

Cobb hands it over without question.

"How many buttons can I press?" 

"You can program it up to thirteen." Cobb gives Ariadne a gentle look. "He had all thirteen on you. If you'd touched it, you would have had sixty seconds to finish the code."

She nods, her face pale, lips bloodless.

"Can everyone leave the room for a minute?" Arthur asks.

"Well, not really, Arthur," Yusuf says, jerking his head toward the door. "Cameras out there, you know. Guards, possibly? You were under for ten minutes. They're going to get suspicious."

"Not if I'm with you," Joshua says.

"Just for a minute," Arthur says. They're all watching him carefully, he knows. Cobb witnessed his unbridled anger in the dream, and probably thinks he's going to do something stupid. Cobb should know better.

"We don't have a minute," Cobb says.

"We'll have even less if he has us shot on our way out," Arthur insists. He glances meaningfully toward Joshua, then back to Cobb. "Let me take care of it. I'll be quick. Hurry up and get out."

"Come on," Ariadne says, urging Cobb along. She holds a hand out to Joshua, who ignores her and brushes by, his head down. Yusuf follows.

Once they're all gone, Arthur checks Kelly for any more hidden weapons. Then he wakes him. If Cobb had known he was going to wake him, he would have fought harder to talk him out of it.

Kelly comes awake groggily, but focuses when he sees Arthur standing over him with the detonator. 

"I guess you want me to tell you where your partner is," Kelly says, sitting up.

"Stand up and turn around."

Kelly hesitates, sees the look in Arthur's eyes (blank, he imagines,) and does as he's told. Arthur places the detonator around Kelly's neck.

"He's in the next building over."

"I know where he is, Mr. Kelly. Everything's been taken out of your head already. I don't need you to tell me anything. I have all your secrets; I know what you are, what you like to do, who you like to do it to."

"I'm not like you," Kelly says, his voice a hiss, his composure breaking.

"I agree. You're nothing like me." Arthur clicks the detonator closed. "If I were a religious man I'd thank every fucking god there was that we're not alike. You don't specifically want men, or women, or even really anyone in particular. You're just a predator." Arthur presses the series of colored buttons in a precise pattern, thirteen times. Red, blue, blue, green, yellow, green, red, red, blue, blue, green, yellow, green. Ariadne had called it Simon Sez. Arthur had liked that game as a child.

"I guess you'll have to leave the Towers sometime," he says. "When they come for you. I'll leave it to the professionals to get this off you." He shoves Kelly forward, and Kelly stumbles and falls face-down on the bed. 

Instead of getting up, he turns his head and looks over his shoulder at Arthur.

"What are you going to do? Kick me? Spit on me?"

Arthur frowns in distaste. "Jesus. What the fuck is _wrong_ with you?"

"There's one more thing I want to show you, Arthur. If you'll open the blinds of my window, please."

"Oh, fuck off." As if he would be stupid enough to expose his position to Kelly's men on the street.

"It's a part of my show," Kelly goes on, as if he hadn't heard him. "It's my big screen TV. My home theater. I can relax on my bed and watch it all. What I have my people do to them. I let my boy watch from here. I hoped it would make him stronger. You can see, too."

The tone of Kelly's voice makes Arthur's neck prickle, and his palms feel cold.

"I wonder how much longer your partner has," Kelly goes on. "I had him strung up and whipped, like they'd do in the old days. When there were certain things you could do to people. But today's technology adds an edge to that, too. Tasers. I like those. I like electricity. It's hard to keep standing under those conditions. And I didn't exactly string him up by the arms, either."

Arthur thinks of the wire garrotte around Ariadne's neck in the dream. About the detonator he'd put around her. He grips his gun and goes to the window, unable to help himself. He's sure as hell not going to throw the blinds open, but he does part them a crack and look out.

An alleyway below them is bordered on all four sides with high-rises. And across from Kelly's suite, maybe fifteen feet away, is another building, one with wide windows. 

It takes him only a second to get the entire picture: Eames with a garrotte around his neck, struggling to remain standing in a pool of his own blood. Two men lounging around on chairs in the loft with him, awaiting their boss's order to continue, or to end him.

"Every ten minutes," Kelly says, "they do a little more. Next time they shock him, it'll probably be the last. Think you'll get there in time?"

Arthur throws the blinds open, pulling them to either side of the expansive room. No. He doesn't think he'll get there in time. Not if he has to fight his way down the stairs, and fight his way into the warehouse across the way. Not even armed to the teeth. It would take him ten minutes alone just to get down stairs, and he doesn't know how long ago the last time was. He could have five minutes. Three. Or none.

He glances at Kelly, who is still lying on the bed. Arthur knows he isn't bluffing.

It's fifteen feet across to the warehouse, with a fire escape outside of the loft where they're holding Eames. His mind calculates time, distance, divides by the number of thugs he imagines guarding the place, and what he'll need to take them all out at once and clear his wake so they don't chase him.

He's going to need more firepower than he has. And there's only one explosive within his reach.

"One way or another," Arthur says to Kelly, "you really have fucked with me for the last time." 

He goes back to Kelly on the bed and yanks him up by the detonating collar. He quickly taps in the color code--red, blue, blue, green, yellow, green, red, red, blue, blue, green, yellow, green—and releases Kelly from it. He closes the ring again, resetting it, and programs three colors: red, blue, green. Easy enough.

Then he smashes the metal ring into Kelly's teeth, destroying that perfect, bleached veneer, leaving his mouth a bloody smear. Kelly falls back making guttural noises, blood dripping from the fingers he's clamping over his broken teeth.

 _He won't be giving any orders for a while,_ Arthur thinks. _Not ones that anyone would understand._

Satisfied--for now--he doesn't give it too much thought when he fires the gun he'd nabbed from the thugs at Kelly's windows. One, two, three – he takes out each pane of glass and they fall shattering to the alley below. The wind from outside whips into the room, scattering papers, knocking the blinds aside.

The door behind him flies open, and Cobb is the first one into the room, his Beretta drawn, his other arm held out in front of Yusuf, Ariadna and Joshua behind him.

Also behind Cobb are a few more of Kelly's guards, and Cobb hasn't seen them yet. Arthur takes aim, yells "DOWN!" Cobb has worked with him long enough to get everyone out of his line of fire. Arthur shoots the guards, then turns back to the window.

He's definitely got the attention of the men in the loft with Eames. He sees them run downstairs for backup.

"Close that door and lock it," Arthur tells Cobb.

"I got it," Joshua says. "I'll keep them out."

"Good." Arthur takes off his jacket. The less drag, the better.

"Arthur," Cobb says, "please." His voice is quiet, even in the wind tunnel that the room has become. " _Please._ "

Arthur thinks of Mal, and for a moment, he feels awful for what he's about to do. But he also sees no other clear choice.

Ariadne catches on, and she runs to him, gripping his arm. "Arthur," she says. Her voice is clipped, as if she's holding down panic with reason. "Arthur, listen to me, okay? You're, you're _awake._ This is _not a dream._ You can't. You can't do this. It's not a dream."

"I know," he says. And strangely, he feels absolutely no fear. He feels empty, cold inside, and still, like a frozen lake. 

A snippet of a melody catches in his head. He doesn't know where it came from or why it's playing now. It's the one Eames had played for him on the train. He hears it so perfectly--calming him, draining him of adrenaline—that he very nearly hums it aloud. Even his arm stops hurting.

"Arthur, _no_ ," Ariadne says, as he takes a few long paces backwards away from the window.

He takes another look at Cobb, whose face is tight, pale, lips pressed together. Cobb turns away.

Arthur lines himself up with the fire escape. Fifteen feet from the ledge; he's a good judge of distance. The wind is hitting him from the right; he gives himself about a foot of drag. 

Then he runs, long, hard strides like when he'd done track in school or had outrun the shitheads who always wanted to fuck with his life. Glass crunches underneath his shoes as he nears the ledge. He grips the detonator; he can't afford to drop it.

And then he launches off, hits the air, throwing his arms up and out. It's nothing like in dreams. In two seconds' time, the wind whips him to the left, stings his watering eyes. He feels himself dropping from three storeys up. The fire escape is just within reach. 

He hits it hard, grabs it with his bad arm, and feels a sudden ice cold sensation on his fingertips. Bashes his forehead on the metal of the ladder. His icy fingers, wet with blood, start to slip.

The calm starts to slip.

Consciousness starts to slip.

** ** **

The bullet crashing into the brick wall beside his head rouses him. Arthur grips the ladder with his free hand and looks down to the street. Kelly's men are just beginning to surge into the alley below him, drawing their weapons, and one has already fired. The next one won't miss.

He climbs faster, risking a glance over his shoulder at the ruined windows of the Towers. Cobb, Ariadne, Yusuf and the boy all stand at the broken window, just pale faces, mouths agape. He has a second to see Ariadne's hand over her heart, her wide, frantic eyes, and everyone's relief that he's alive, and then he turns back.

Everything looks clear. He's in the place in his head where all peripheral thoughts are shut off, and all unnecessary information locked out. Edges look sharp, colors bright, the world clearly defined.

Vaulting himself over the railing, he searches the glass door to the loft for a latch to open it. There is none; the door only opens from the inside. He can't even look at Eames yet, even though he's only a few feet away, separated by a pane of glass. Arthur shoots through the door, and knows he's running out of ammo. The stench of the warehouse blasts out from the broken doorway: years of torture. Kelly's entertainment room.

Below him, Kelly's men shout some orders and try to re-group. They'll be heading around the front to cut them off from escape, and he can't allow that. He's got them all (or most of them) in one place below him.

Arthur takes the detonator from around his wrist, where it's slipped to, and presses just one button. The lights all flash in synch; sixty seconds before detonation. If he throws it now, they'll all clear out.

Instead, he takes a second to fire two shots into the crowd of guards below, just to keep their attention A few of them return fire, clumsily, and he crouches down. He knows at least a handful of them are going to make it to the front of the warehouse and block his way.

Thirty seconds, give or take. And it will take a few more seconds on its way down.

Arthur throws the detonator into the crowd, and then dives through the broken window into the loft. 

When the blast goes off, he shields Eames from the shards of glass that it sends hurtling through the air from three storeys below. A few of them catch into his back; he barely notices them.

He doesn't wait for the dust to literally begin to settle before he searches for something to cut the wire around Eames's neck. There's a cart full of instruments across from him: knives, pliers, the taser, an actual fucking whip. And a gun, of course. In case of emergency – in case the subject fights back too much or lingers too long. He grabs the pliers and the gun, and turns back to Eames, still not looking at his face. He can't yet. Not until he's finished. He cuts the wire right at the back of Eames's neck and catches him before he can fall.

His hands slip and stick to Eames's back and Eames makes a choked cry of pain. Arthur sees the lacerations covering his back, and, fuck, it's goddamn freezing in here, Eames is cold, shivering, his skin feels like ice. Arthur knows that the few guards who survived the blast are already heading to the front, and will be coming through the door and up the stairs in a minute, but he can't take Eames outside like this. So he pulls his own shirt off, not even bothering with the buttons, just tearing it quickly off, and fits it over Eames's shoulders.

Eames slumps against him and rasps his name, but valiantly keeps his legs under him.

Arthur slings an arm around his waist and says, "I'm sorry, I know I'm hurting you but we have to get out of here. To the stairs, come on."

By the time they're at the top of the stairs, Kelly's men are bursting through the front doors below them. There are six of them. Arthur picks them off with the gun he just took off the cart, one by one, before they even realize he's up there. He misses a few times, gets one in the shoulder, one in the leg, and hits the door and window behind them as he fires aimlessly.

"You have to help me," he tells Eames. "At least on the stairs, come on."

Eames does, only stumbling once or twice, Arthur having to catch him around the front of his shoulders each time and steady him. At the bottom of the stairs, Eames doubles up and retches over to the side, dry-heaving nothing.

The guard that Arthur had only wounded fires shakily, hitting the stairs above them. Arthur trains his weapon carefully this time and finishes him off, a perfect shot between the eyes.

Then there's a moment of quiet. Eames grabs his wrist with cold fingers and looks up at him, confused, and so obviously unsure if this is reality or not that Arthur wants to take a moment to reassure him. But he doesn't have a moment. And he can't lose his focus yet.

"You're..." Eames begins, but can't continue.

"Let's go," he says.

Something drips into his eye, hot and wet, obscuring his vision for a moment. Arthur can only guess that he's bleeding from somewhere, but he doesn't feel any pain so it doesn't matter. He wipes it away with the back of his wrist and pulls Eames alongside him, making their way to the doors.

The street outside is black, no streetlights (he must have taken out a transformer with the detonator,) and it's hellishly cold and windy. It vaguely alarms Arthur that Eames doesn't shiver against him, doesn't flinch from the cold, and generally doesn't react.

It's the feeling of being in the cross-hairs that alerts Arthur to move even before he even sees the laser site on his chest. He dives to the side, pushing Eames along with him. A half second ahead of everyone else. Half a sight more aware. Hyper-aware. 

When a pair of headlights rounds the corner of the otherwise dark road, and a black SUV brakes violently on the street in front of them, Arthur aims the gun with his left hand, holding onto Eames with his right. He won't shoot yet because he can guess that the car is bulletproof.

Then the back door opens, and it's Ariadne waving him in, yelling, "Come on, come _on!_ " Cobb beside her, Yusuf's curly hair over the front seat, backlit from the headlights.

Arthur damn near loses his grip, almost thinks that he's dreaming, until he sees Joshua behind the wheel. He pieces it together. The kid got them out of the Towers, and stole his father's car.

He pulls Eames to the back of the SUV, where Cobb and Ariadne reach out to pull him up. Arthur climbs in behind him, and the door isn't even closed yet when the SUV peels out, crunching over broken glass and debris, and leaving the Towers behind.

** ** **

Arthur thinks he may or may not have blacked out for about three seconds, because Cobb has got his chin in his hand and is damn near shouting his name.

"Stop," Arthur says, pushing him away. And then, "Eames."

Cobb backs off, and so does Ariadne, who was also hovering, the way that concerned people hover. 

Eames is in the corner of the back of the SUV, lying curled on his side with Arthur's shirt over his back, and Cobb's dinner jacket (that Ariadne had been wearing) on top of that.

"Give me some light," Arthur says. "Yusuf, get back here."

Joshua hits the lights, and Cobb and Ariadne shove aside, allowing Yusuf to climb over the seats. When he gets to the middle seats, Ariadne carefully slides herself over the seat-backs into the middle, and Yusuf climbs to the back. It's big SUV but a tight fit for the way-back. 

"How bad is he?" Yusuf asks. 

Arthur crouches down, makes himself as small as he can, and carefully turns Eames's face toward him. He can't tell what color his lips are, by the sickly car-light. But his skin still feels like ice, he's paper-white, and his eyes are fluttering randomly, showing only the whites. Somehow this frightens Arthur more than anything else has so far.

Yusuf shoves him away and looks into Eames's face, pulling his eyelids up and checking his reactions, pulse, whatever it is he's doing while Arthur leans over him. Eventually Yusuf physically shoves him and says, "Go away and give me a minute!"

Seeing Yusuf's calm shattered – this also makes Arthur nearly panic. 

Then: "Arthur, Arthur," Eames whispers, his voice cutting in and out.

"He's not the best I've seen him, but it doesn't look fatal," Yusuf says, and Arthur isn't sure if he's reassuring him or Eames. "Eames, can you hear me? Hello?"

"Yeah," Eames whispers. 

Arthur sighs in relief, rests his head back against the plush interior, and may or may not black out again for a few seconds, because the next thing he knows, Yusuf is shining a light into his eyes.

"I'm all right," he says, pushing him out of the way.

"You hit your head."

"Whatever," Arthur answers. "I almost cooled myself but managed to crush out, quit playing croaker with me man, it's eggs in the coffee, we just need a flop."

Yusuf's eyes narrow in concern. Arthur's not sure why. 

"I'm sorry?" Yusuf says. "What was that?"

"I said I'm fine. I almost knocked myself out during our escape. You don't have to play doctor with me, I'm all right. We need to get to the hotel."

"Yes," Yusuf agrees, still sounding wary. "Good idea." He turns to the front of the SUV. "Joshua. Do you know of any places that your father doesn't own?"

"Handful," the boy says.

"Take us to one please."

"Wait," Arthur says. "Bring this heap to the Holiday Inn. That's where me and Eames have our keisters and kale, we'll lie dormy there until I can peach on this Kelly and get the peepers out here. Shouldn't take too long. Soup the kidneys."

This time everyone in the car turns around to look at him, Ariadne peering over the seat, her eyes wide. 

"What is he talking about?" Joshua asks.

"All their stuff is at the hotel," Cobb says – which confuses Arthur, because that's exactly what he'd just said. His eyes never leave Arthur as he continues. "We can stay there until he calls in the feds. And we should hurry." Cobb's got a look of concern on his mug like he's never heard words before. Cautiously, he says, "Arthur?"

"What?" Arthur says. "Come on, let's get there. Eames needs help."

With that, he scoots over to Eames, moving Yusuf out of the way. Seeing him awake, and looking at him, clears some strange haze of his past away from his mind. Arthur mentally goes over the last minute or so with a feeling of unreality. Eames pulls himself upright and cringes when his back comes in contact with the wall.

"Arthur," he says, voice broken, blood still dripping down his neck.

"Yeah," Arthur says. "We're okay." He's not sure if he should touch him or not.

Eames raises a shaking hand to Arthur's forehead. "Bleeding," he manages. 

"It's nothing."

Then Eames takes the sleeve of the shirt Arthur draped over him during their escape and presses it to Arthur's forehead with such infinite gentleness that it doesn't seem real. 

Arthur releases a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding and lets his eyes close.

"...shirt?" Eames asks, the first few words lost in the back of his throat.

"You're wearing my shirt," Arthur says.

Eames takes the sleeve away from Arthur's head and Arthur opens his eyes. Eames looks at the sleeve and manages a smile. "...Wouldn't fit me." And then, indicating the blood on the sleeve, "Sorry."

"It's okay. I was tired of that shirt anyway. Plus you did a lot worse to the back of it. You're really torn up, Eames."

"Hurts like fuck."

"We'll get you fixed up. Just like new."

And Arthur may or may not black out for the rest of the ride – or maybe taking a short nap is the better term, because when he's next aware, the back door of the SUV is opening and parking lot lights are shining in his face. He leans over to check on Eames who is slumped over and likely unconscious again, but breathing. Shivering under Arthur's coat and Cobb's jacket, and _fuck_ , it's freezing out here. 

"Hey," he says, placing a hand on Eames's arm. But then Cobb is grabbing Arthur by the arm and pulling him out.

"Come on," Cobb says. "I moved all your stuff to your new room, it's a little bigger and we got adjoining."

"You moved...what?" How the fuck long has he actually been out?

"Come on, hurry," Cobb urges.

Ariadne is carrying the PASIV upstairs, shivering in her ridiculous backless dress. Yusuf stands outside the SUV as if waiting to help them along, and Joshua is at the bottom of the stairs, unsure.

"Cobb, I need you to take a call for me on my cell and give all your information to my contact."

"Your cell is in your room with everything else," Cobb assures him.

He gets out of the vehicle, freezing without his shirt, and he, Cobb and Yusuf together get Eames out next. Eames rouses himself enough to walk between them, supported. He is a mess, more of a mess than Arthur's ever seen him, with blood crusted around his neck and dripping down his back even under the shirt and jacket. His lips are bloodless and dry, his eyes vacant.

Arthur gets to the stairs in front of him and grabs both his wrists, walking backwards up the stairs.

"Eames," he says. "Come on. To our hotel room."

Eames looks up at him, shocked and confused in the glaring lights. "Awake?" he asks.

"Yes," all three assure him at once.

"We're not," he insists in a broken voice.

And then he changes. Not so much physically—his features are the same—but everything about the way he carries himself, the way he looks at others. 

"If I were awake, there's no way I'd be able to do this," he says, his voice a perfect mimicry of Ariadne's inflections. His eyes even have that same fiercely earnest and curious look to them.

Arthur pulls him along, taking it step by step. "You're not forging," he says. "You still look the same. When you see the mirror, you'll know."

His shoulders straighten and square as much as possible, as he takes the next step up. He pulls one hand away from Arthur. One eyebrow quirks, the other draws down in a worried frown that is so essentially Arthur that Arthur himself almost pulls back. "I should have been more thorough, Cobb," he says, in Arthur's voice. He gestures with his free hand to himself, a _mea culpa_ gesture if Arthur's ever seen one. "This one's on me, okay, but I'll know better next time. In the meantime we can work with what we have, plan around it."

Cobb's eyes flick uncertainly up to Arthur, with some uncomfortable mix of surprise and shame.

"I don't..." Arthur begins, but doesn't know how to finish. _Sound like that? I sound_ exactly _like that. How pathetic._

Then Eames pulls his shoulders in, as he takes another step. Ducks his head a fraction of an inch, mimics putting glasses on and forges a sharp, but somewhat lost stare, looking somewhere over Arthur's shoulder. "I got the goods on this last mug," he says, in Arthur's oldest, almost forgotten west coast accent. "We can pinch them and get them in the pen for a stretch." 

He hasn't gotten the lingo, but he's gotten the accent and the attitude down so clearly that Arthur lets go of his other hand and draws back, going up another step. He's entirely unnerved now because he knows for a fact that he doesn't talk like that on a regular basis—only when necessary, really—and he certainly no longer looks like that, and he hasn't in years. 

"Eames," Cobb says, gripping his arm a little firmer and pulling him up the last few steps. "You're not forging. You're awake. Where's your totem?"

"Gone."

"Well... all right, come on. We'll figure it out." 

They get to the top of the stairs and Arthur stands aside. Cobb leads them down the outdoor hallway to their room. He sends Yusuf in after them and sends Joshua to the next one, where, Arthur assumes, they'll stay with Ariadne.

Cobb's laid all their stuff out on the beds, including their laptops and Eames's zipped up and secure traveling work station.

Arthur opens the case on the bed and pulls out his cell. He dials the number he knows by heart. His connection doesn't pick up because the digital clock reads 3:12 AM and every working person is asleep, or at least those with families. 

"It's me," he tells the voicemail. "My finger man's going to have this blower; you know him so when you call back and he picks up, don't be surprised. He'll give you the rap, everything you need to get the nippers on this sap, so it's all ribbed up. Play it safe when you come in, 'cause this guy's lousy with insanity. I already put the screws on him but his trouble boys are still gunning for us. Watch your back."

He ends the call and hands the cell to Cobb.

Cobb takes it, giving him the once-over as if he's suspicious of something.

"What?" Arthur asks. "The phone's going to ring whenever my connection gets the message. Pick up, and tell him everything you found out from Kelly's brain. Times, places, dates, details. The feds will be on him by tomorrow."

"I will," Cobb says. He still looks suspicious, mixed with some strange nostalgia that Arthur doesn't understand, but then he's not the best reader of people; that's Eames.

Yusuf comes in and closes the door behind them, all business. "Turn up the thermostat and run hot water in the bathroom; he's freezing. You probably are too but Eames is a little more urgent, and we've got to get those wounds cleaned. If I run down to the sundry to get antiseptic and painkillers, can you promise me not to fall unconscious and / or kill the both of you?"

"I can do that," Arthur says.

"Leave the door open between rooms."

"No; I've got it."

"Get yourself cleaned up too," he orders. "He's dehydrated, get some water into him slowly, even if it's tap. If you feel lightheaded, call Cobb at once. Don't play around with this, Arthur."

"I won't," he says, insulted. "I took a knock on the head, it's not my first."

"Clearly not," Yusuf says, in that way he has of overpronouncing his consonants when acting superior, and shuts the door as he leaves.

Cobb is still standing there, bracing Eames on one arm, holding Arthur's phone in the other hand, and looking troubled.

"I got this," Arthur says, and more or less takes Eames from him.

"If you need anything..."

"I'll come in. Go on, get Ariadne something decent to wear and look after that kid."

"Right." Without any further questions, Cobb pockets Arthur's cell phone and goes through the door that adjoins the room. He doesn't quite shut it all the way. 

Once Cobb is gone and it's just the two of them, Eames says, "I can't stand anymore," and begins to fall.

Arthur catches him as well as he can and pulls him to the bed. He sets him down gently onto his side and pulls the scratchy hotel comforter up over him. He knows that blankets aren't enough when your core temperature is too low.

"I'll be right back," he says, and heads into the bathroom to run the shower as hot as it can go. Steam is the quickest way he has to get heat into him. He fills a bathroom cup of warm water and brings it back out, closing the door behind him. On his way back to the bed, he closes the door between the rooms. 

"Drink," he says, pulling Eames up.

He does, grimacing at the taste and temperature.

"It's not exactly tea," Arthur says. "Sorry. I need you to come into the bathroom. It's warm. Yusuf told me to get you cleaned up."

He makes quick work of getting him out of his pants, which, he now sees, are torn in different places. But not just torn, actually cut. And there are corresponding shallow cuts on his legs, too. 

"Jesus fuck," he says, feeling the blood begin to pound behind his eyes again.

When he gets the coat and shirt off of him, he sees more than just the scored skin which is the obvious result of the whip he saw lying around, but also two-pronged burn marks scattered all over him. At least five.

He swallows hard before speaking. "I'm-I'm going to fill the tub, okay?"

"Nah," Eames says. "Sitting in filth like that. Shower."

"You can't even stand."

"You'll have to help me. Come on." He braces himself up and holds out a hand. "Give me a hand then."

Arthur takes his icy hand and pulls him to his feet. He's unsure where he can actually put an arm around his waist, because his back is so bloody. Even when he reaches low, Eames hisses through his teeth.

"Sorry," Arthur says.

"Necessary."

They make it into the bathroom, where the hot water has turned it into a steam room. Eames shivers and pulls his arms around himself.

"Strip off," Eames says.

"Typical," Arthur answers, easing him down to lean against the sink. "Any excuse, Mr. Eames."

That gets him a weak smile, and he's glad for it.

He does as he's told though, and then gets Eames's underclothes off, afraid to look at any further damage. The blood has dripped all the way down his legs, and he guesses he's got to rinse it away to check.

He lowers the temperature of the water and changes the stream to a gentler one.

"This is probably going to hurt like hell, Eames. You sure you don't want me to just fill the tub?" He knows how impractical that would be, and how actually unhygienic to have him sitting in a tub full of blood and filth. But he's already flinching at the thought of the water hitting Eames's back.

Eames shakes his head. 

"All right." He helps him up, and as they get into the shower, Arthur shields him from the water, facing him. He takes the wet washcloth and his first order of business is to clean the blood from his neck. The laceration there isn't as deep as he'd feared but it still looks bruised and raw. Eames presses his lips together and doesn't make a sound. 

"We're going to have to turn around. So. Whenever you're ready."

"...time like the present..." 

Arthur turns him so that the shower is hitting his back. Eames sucks his breath in hard and arches away, pushing Arthur back against the tiles and bracing his hands braced his shoulders. He leans against him like a tired fighter.

"Sorry, sorry," Arthur says, steadying him.

"Stop apologizing."

Gingerly, Arthur reaches around Eames's waist and runs his fingers over his back, trying to wash away the caked on blood. He can feel the welts under his fingers and he winces every time he touches them. Eames, however, just drops his head against Arthur's shoulder and waits it out. He's breathing hard, shivering as he warms up, and Arthur thinks that this is the least erotic embrace he's ever been in. He's too afraid of hurting him, too horrified at what's happened as it all catches up to him.

"Fuck," he whispers.

"Don't apologize again."

"No," Arthur says. He bites back his fury, resists the fear he knows is lurking because he's not finished yet. And Eames would only be upset. "I wasn't. I was just thinking, for a while there I thought I was going to have to buy you Christmas shoes tonight."

Eames laughs weakly against his shoulder. "No...won't be meeting Jesus."

"Yeah, well, happy fucking holidays," Arthur says, and he thinks, _I killed about forty men tonight. Not good men, by any standard. But then, maybe I'm not a good man, either._ "It's just all about who survives," he says aloud.

"What, the holidays?" Eames asks. He sounds brighter, more present.

Arthur shakes his head. Eames surprises him by pulling away and looking him in the eye. He even looks a little more aware. 

"Let's see your head," Eames says.

"Huh?"

Eames stands aside—still shaky—and lets the water hit Arthur in the face. Arthur tastes blood and remembers the mess of it caked into his hair, from when he'd bashed himself on the ladder. 

"Feel dizzy?"

"I'm fine. Warm yet?"

"Let me sit for a while."

"I'll get you some clothes," Arthur says, helping him to sit under the stream of water. "Yusuf put the heat on about a thousand. He said he'd be back with bandages and things like that."

"Sandwiches?"

"Bandages. But sandwiches would be good. I'm starving and you probably are, too." He steps out of the shower.

"Hey," Eames whispers. "Still not sure I'm awake."

The words chill Arthur for a moment. Eames's totem is likely forever gone in the warehouse. Then he picks up his own pants and retrieves the die out of his pocket. He and Eames had shown each other their totems years before, in case either of them had lost theirs.

"Do you remember?" he asks, holding up the little square of red.

"Yes." 

Arthur wraps a towel around his hips and sits on the edge of the tub, dropping the die into Eames's hand. 

"I see," Eames says, running his fingers along the surfaces. He rolls it onto the porcelain, then picks it back up. "Good. I see. Then I must have been hallucinating because I saw you flying through the sky to me."

"Was I on a broom?"

"Idiot," Eames says affectionately.

Arthur runs a hand through Eames's short hair, and gently scrubs at his scalp, trying to wash away the day of filth. "I just jumped across, that's all. It was only about fifteen feet, like the long jump in school."

"Except three stories up, you fucking crazy fucker."

"What was I supposed to do? You saved my ass twice since I've known you. At great personal risk. I was supposed to let them fry you till you hung yourself? You can't even be upset about this."

"I'm not upset, I'm..."

"And it's bad enough that Cobb and Ariadne got involved in this because of me, I never even checked out who worked with us on the Fischer case, it's easy to say there wasn't enough time until something like this happens."

"I don't hear this," Eames says, out of patience even as the rest of the blood washes off of him in rivulets, revealing more bruises along his ribs and thighs. He grabs Arthur's hand, stilling it, and squeezes. His voice still barely rises above a crushed whisper. "I don't fucking hear this, Arthur. If you're going to look for a way to blame yourself then the second I can get up I'm going to nail you to a cross. Really. Enough. Stop pissing me off when I'm in pain."

"I'm—"

"And stop apologizing. We're done here. If you'll get me something to wear and help me out now?"

"Sure," Arthur says, drawing his hand away from Eames's grip. "Don't get out until I come back for you."

He gets up and goes into the other room, closing the bathroom door behind him. 

He's not sure how Eames managed to make him feel chastised just for trying to take responsibility. He tries to figure out what just happened as he goes through Eames's suitcase, looking for something warm for him to wear, something soft at least. The room is now hot and dry, enough to make his throat ache and burn with thirst. Water. He was supposed to make sure that Eames drank a lot of water, too, even from the tap. Fuck, he forgot that, too.

He thinks briefly that he hopes Yusuf will also pick up some bottled water. He glances at the clock then, sees that it's creeping up on 4 AM and thinks, _Yusuf's taking a really long time out there._

** ** ** **

The pain becomes a dull roar as Eames lies down on his side in the bed, Arthur fussing with blankets and pillows and looking worried and distant. Eames finds his fussiness weirdly soothing. So efficient and fluid. Watching Arthur get fussy like this has always either amused him or distracted him from his own troubles, and this is no exception. Sometimes he would push Arthur's very obvious buttons just to see him get like that.

But exhaustion is also weighing him down. He's lost track of all time; it could be morning or night for all he knows, and the clock is turned away from him. 

Arthur bothers him with a glass of warm water yet again, making him lean up on his elbow to drink it. Eames does so with the air of one long-suffering, even though he secretly knows better. Arthur has done everything right. He usually does, whether he wants to admit it or not.

"Any better?" Arthur asks, when he's done drinking. He looks pale, bruised, so tired that he might float away.

"Yes," Eames says, even though he doesn't think he'll be 'better' any time soon, at least not without pain killers. But then, a little pain never hurt anyone, after all. "Very much, Arthur."

Instead of lying down with him, or even in the next bed over, Arthur paces, checking the window, checking the lock on the door, and then the window again.

"You're making the air nervous," Eames says. "Can't you be still? Come here to me."

Arthur does. After checking the window one more time (Eames isn't sure what he expects to see out there; it only leads to a small court and not the parking lot,) he comes to the bed and sits on the edge. His shoulders drop and he scrubs his hand over his face, the picture of exhaustion.

"It's not done yet," he says. 

"I know." And he does. Kelly's not dead; Arthur would have told him if he was. Instead he's been quiet about it. "But in the mean time, what can you do?"

"I can go look for Yusuf. I tried his cell."

"It's only been a little while." Eames isn't sure if that's true or not, but it feels like it. Yet even as he says this, he knows he's lying. A little while or not, Yusuf is in trouble. He knows it the way he always knows trouble. "And where would you look?"

"I don't know."

Eames scoots over on the bed, making room. Every move sends a hot throb of pain through his back, his legs and his neck, but he doesn't let it show. Arthur doesn't need his troubles now; he's done enough. "Come on," he urges, patting the bed.

And Arthur, who never likes sharing a bed or even sharing space sometimes, lies down next to him, staring at the ceiling. Eames carefully drapes an arm across his stomach. Arthur utterly surprises him by laying his cold fingers over his hand. In all the years they've known each other, they've playfully fooled around, fucked once in a while, and not-so-playfully fought over issues great and small; they've each had a turn saving the others' ass and they've worked together as a team, and sometimes apart, as rivals. They've looked inside each others' minds and even shared totems. Yet in all that time, they've always shied away from actual intimacy. Since he's known Arthur, his body language has always read "keep out", and he has always bridled at physical contact that he didn't initiate himself. 

This new Arthur—the one who kisses him in front of mirrors and rests his hand over Eames's—this creature worries him a little.

"All right there, Arthur?" he asks. He still can't get his voice above an annoying fucking whisper.

"Yeah." Arthur's voice is a whisper, too. "Why are you asking me? You're the one I'm worried about."

"I've crawled home from worse," Eames says. He's lying. He hasn't ever been hurt this badly. He hasn't ever come so close to dying. He doesn't let it get to him though; it's pointless to dwell on it.

He's just about letting his eyes close when he hears a soft knock. Arthur jumps up like he's on fire and goes to the side door, the one that adjoins the rooms. Eames feels Cobb's presence in the room before he hears him speak; he's always good at identifying a person by vibe alone. 

"Did you get the call from my connection?" Arthur asks.

"Yeah. Arthur..."

"Did you tell him everything?"

"Yeah. Arthur listen."

"Are they on their way?"

" _Arthur._ " Cobb's voice is sharp. Eames hears alarm in it, and he pushes himself up one one elbow. The two of them are behind him, and he can't turn his head to see them without his neck and back screaming in pain.

"Come around this way, you lot," he says, waving his hand. "Let me in on it."

The two of them make their way to the other side of the bed, Arthur now holding his own cell phone and looking not just worried, but actually upset.

"What is it?" Eames says. "What's Kelly got to say? Read it to me."

Arthur glances from the phone to Eames. Then back at the phone. "' _I know the extractor called in the feds by now. Call them off if you know what's good for you. Cobb forgot I know where his kids are.'_ "

Cobb sinks down on the edge of the bed and drops his face into his hands.

"Get the feds out to your kids," Eames says.

Cobb says, "I called first thing. They were curious why I was involved with someone like Kelly."

"I can take care of that," Arthur says. "We're not on the wrong side anymore, Cobb. The guy I know there, he..."

"I know," Cobb says. 

"Why aren't you heading home?" Arthur asks.

"Because the kids are already on a plane to Paris with their grandfather. Go on, tell him the rest."

Arthur's mouth is a tight line, as if he can't do enough to rectify this, when none of it was his fault to begin with. Cobb's grief and worry are lying across his shoulders again. Arthur looks back down to the phone and continues reading the text.

"' _Also, did you think I couldn't track my own fucking car? You kidnapped my son, so I'm getting reacquainted with your chemist._ '" He opens his mouth as if to continue, then closes it again with a cursory glance to Eames.

"Go on," Eames says. If Arthur thinks that he doesn't know all of his tells by now, he's a fool. 

"It's not important." Arthur grabs a jacket out of the hanging wardrobe and begins to put it on.

"Take that fucking coat off and finish the text, Arthur."

Cobb offers no input; he just sits on the edge of the bed, worried eyes watching Arthur make his decision.

"You're not leaving," Eames insists. 

"You know I have to."

"The fucking feds will be on him less than an hour if Cobb called it in already."

"And Yusuf might already be dead by then," Arthur snaps. "That matters to you, right?"

The words sting like the whip did. "Of course, you asshole, but you going after him is not going to stop him. You know that. He'll have men waiting for you, an army of them." His voice is beginning to run dry; his throat burns like he's swallowed bleach and glass. "You're _one man,_ Arthur. You forget that sometimes." _In more ways than one,_ Eames thinks, but doesn't say out loud. He doesn't need to confront Arthur That Was right now. Or really ever.

"I'll be back in a little while." Arthur grabs his Glock, refusing to look at anyone. "Cobb, stay here until I get back."

He grabs one thing from his suitcase: A kevlar vest. And then he's out the door.

Eames feels a fury that he hasn't felt in a long time. The pain makes it worse, pounding behind his eyes, hot and bright. He wants to hit something, shoot something in the face. But he can't even turn over yet.

"Why didn't you fucking stop him?" he rasps at Cobb, his own voice making him even angrier because he can't yell like he wants to. "What do you think he's going to accomplish aside from getting killed?"

Cobb doesn't turn to face him as he answers. "I've known Arthur since he was in college," he says, his voice low. "There's never been a time when I could stop him from doing anything. _Anything._ Mal used to try. Sometimes she could get him to listen. But not if he was really set on something. That's who he is, Eames. You should know that by now. Arthur wouldn't be Arthur if he was even remotely stoppable. And he also wouldn't survive."

Eames knows that's true, but still. Dread finally sinks into his bones and he falls sideways onto the bed. "He's just one man," he repeats. "Tell me what the rest of the text said."

Cobb takes a second to think it over. "Basically that he wants Arthur to come alone, and he would trade Yusuf for him. He mentioned that Arthur had hurt him. Which he did." Finally Cobb turns to him. His eyes are bright and he doesn't look as concerned as he should. "See, that's the thing," he says. "Arthur knocked Kelly's teeth out. But not only that, he totally annihilated his pride. He shot out his windows, took out his thugs, freed you, and just... Kelly's totally humiliated. He's not going to kill Arthur right away. He wants to even the score first."

"Even fucking better," Eames says, but he kind of already knows what Cobb is telling him by now.

"It is better," Cobb says. "It will buy Arthur and Yusuf some time. If he can stall long enough, the feds will get there before any real shit goes down. And, Eames, you know that Arthur has a few last minute tricks that he keeps to himself. He fights better at close range. He _could_ take care of it."

"Could," Eames repeats. "Could is not enough."


	6. Chapter 6

** ** ** **

_My hair combed back like a raven's wing  
My muscles hard and tight  
And curling from the business end of my gun  
Was a query-mark of cordite _

When Arthuer gets into the car that Eames had stolen for them, he looks down to the plug that says "AUX" and thinks of the trip up here. It's not Talking Heads he's thinking of now, not Rachmaninoff even, or Pink Floyd. He's just mildly wondering what he'll play for Eames on the way back down. 

Leonard Cohen, he thinks. Or – no - maybe Nick Cave. Murder Ballads. He could be in the mood for that, once this is over.

And after this morning, it will be over. He's so fucking through with this.

He starts the car and heads off to the ruined warehouse, where Kelly said to meet him, one on one (which he knows is bullshit.)

The sky is still dark when he kills the headlights and turns the corner, but a fluorescent glare illuminates the sides of the building he's pulling around. Floodlights, it looks like. He parks the car and walks the rest of the way. The morning is bitter cold but a coat would only be bulkier and slow him down. He hates the kevlar to begin with, if anything it makes him feel even more exposed. And nothing can protect against a headshot.

Kelly is waiting for him at the ruined door of the warehouse. He seems to be alone, but a quick glance up into the windows of the Towers and onto the nearby rooftops reveals his backup. Just shadows, but shadows with guns trained on him.

"Ahaha," Kelly laughs, when he sees him. "Knew you come." His mouth is a black hole and he can't form words with it. He's cleaned up the blood but the jagged edges of what remains of his real teeth give him the appearance of having small fangs.

"Send Yusuf out," Arthur says.

"Row down your weh-hon. All uh 'em."

Arthur takes out the Glock and puts it on the ground in front of him, kicks it a few feet away, then raises both hands. He's done this scenario enough times that he knows what's expected of him. He also knows he's in way over his head. And that he doesn't have a choice. 

Hopefully, Kelly will want to play a little first. And with any luck, Arthur can keep his interest for a while.

Kelly comes forward and takes the Glock, pocketing it. Then he walks a few steps more until he's about a foot in front of Arthur. He smiles, purposefully, and licks the shards of teeth he's got left.

"Know how muh' 'is cos' me?"

"I never actually looked into the cost of cosmetic dental work," Arthur says. "Sorry." He smiles himself then, to make a point.

Kelly laughs again, an empty sound. Arthur realizes that he's on pain killers, and thinks maybe he's got an edge if that's the case. 

Kelly comes even closer and brackets Arthur's waist with his hands, slipping them under his jacket. Arthur holds perfectly still, wondering what the fuck he has in mind and if he means to do whatever it is with all of his thugs looking on – this, he will absolutely end now, even if it kills him.

Except Kelly just frisks him for another weapon, checking his holsters and belt first. He's thorough about it, and way too fucking handsy. He takes Arthur's phone out of his pocket, his fingers moving a little too slowly. He has to drop to his knees to check his pants, and he does so with that cracked, empty grin that Arthur thinks he might see in his dreams for a few weeks.

"Having fun?" Arthur asks.

Kelly just keeps on grinning.

"I'm clean. Send Yusuf out."

"You in no huh-sition oo gi' orders. I coul' kill oo righ' here."

Arthur knows this perfectly well and forces a smile. "But that's not what you want to do. I'm willing to be reasonable with you, Mr. Kelly. Send Yusuf out and I'll go where you want me to go." He can see Kelly thinking it over, his eyes dancing with madness. The look in those gleaming eyes, the brutal excitement, almost drains Arthur of his nerve.

Then Kelly backs off a step and signals with his hand. After a few tense moments, Yusuf walks dazedly out of the ruined warehouse, shielding his eyes from the glaring floodlights. 

"I want to see him turn the corner, get into the car I left, and drive away without being followed, Kelly. It's that, or you just shoot me here and we never get to go wherever."

Kelly makes a pretend bow with a flourish of his hand, as if he's granting Arthur a gentlemanly wish. 

"Arthur!" Yusuf calls, when he sees him.

"Go on, Yusuf," Arthur says. "Get in the car and drive." Yusuf stares at him, looking unsure. "I got this," Arthur says. Even though he knows no such thing.

He watches carefully until Yusuf is well around the corner.

"Lead the way, Mr. Kelly," he says.

Kelly gestures with the gun for Arthur to go ahead, indicating the warehouse. Arthur knows what's up there on the loft. He's already had a look around there, and he knows the layout, where things are placed. Things he can throw, or hit someone with.

But once inside, Kelly pushes him toward the back. There's a double-door built into the cement of the floor. He makes Arthur open it, revealing cement steps leading into a basement. An instant later, the smell of waste and rot hits him so strongly that he pulls away, fighting not to retch. This was what he had smelled earlier, and assumed it was from the years of torment that had gone on in Kelly's "entertainment room." Now he understands that it came from down here. Where the real action is, he thinks.

Panic tries to shudder up through his bones; he fights it down. They'll get here in time. The feds will get here in time and they'll figure out where they are. In the meantime, he picks his way carefully down the steps by the dim light that seeps in from above.

Once at the bottom, Kelly hits a light-switch. It bathes the surroundings in a sick, dull yellow glow. Chains hang from the walls here, and from the ceiling. Leather, metal-pronged items that Arthur can't even imagine uses for sit rusted on long tables. An X-shaped rack dominates the entire room in the center, and next to it, what looks like a recycled autopsy table, grated on the bottom to let blood drain out, with straps built into it. 

But none of this is the worst of it. The worst is the pile of human bones in the corner.

Above, someone slams the double-doors shut. Someone who will stand guard up there until Kelly is finished doing whatever he wants to do. 

The room is sound-proofed, too. He can see it in the walls.

Arthur is shaking now, fighting against revulsion and panic that make the dream they'd shared look like a dinner party.

Then Kelly starts talking again.

"I liked you pah-ner, mis-er Eames. Had a goo' 'ime wi' him. He trie' kee' quiet. 'Oo bad I ne-er go' him down here."

A very old rage builds up at the base of his spine; the kind of rage that had caused him such trouble as a teen, when he was careless with his fists, when no one suspected that the lanky, quiet kid with glasses who pulled the good grades could put any weight behind his fist. How good it had felt to let that rage go, sometimes. The confidence that came with throwing that first sucker punch. 

Arthur turns around to Kelly and says, "God, I am so fucking done with you."

Kelly just smiles with his red gums and jagged fangs and aims the gun.

** ** ** **

Arthur looks down at the gun aimed at his chest and then back up to Kelly's eyes. "Why did you bring me down here alone?" he asks. 

"You' unahh'ed."

It takes Arthur a second or two to figure that one out.

He takes a step closer, actually pressing himself against the gun. "What, because you took my gun, you think that makes me unarmed? Guns are accessories, Mr. Kelly." He smiles back, wider than normal, trying to work a manic look into his own eyes and hoping it's effective. He can see Kelly watching him carefully, looking from his eyes to his mouth, and there, _there_ is Kelly's tell: that flicker of his eyes, his tongue darting out to lick teeth that are no longer there. 

Arthur feels filthy, like he's covered in slime, and the stench of this place is all over him, a fucking _skull_ in the corner glaring accusingly at the both of them, and it's not shame he feels for taking one more step closer to Kelly, but revulsion when he asks, "What did you bring me down here for?"

"Get..." Kelly stutters for a second, and a drop of sweat runs down his temple. "Get on tha' 'able."

 _Like hell,_ Arthur thinks, and rams his head forward into Kelly's nose. It hurts like a bitch and dazes him for a second—the knock on his head from earlier makes itself known again—but he doesn't have another second to spare. Kelly drops his right hand, his gun hand, and uses the left to clutch at his spurting nose. 

Arthur ducks and runs, grabbing the first thing he can get his hands on, which is a pair of garden shears (' _what the fuck does he do with garden shears I don't even want to know_ ') and hurls them at Kelly.

They miss, and Kelly fires at him with the Glock. The bullet sinks into the wall and Arthur keeps moving. The room is too small for him to keep running. 

Kelly closes in on him, dazed and once again bloody, but aiming the gun. The closest thing to Arthur's hand is, to his horror, the pile of human remains in the corner. 

He grabs the biggest one, probably a femur. Swings it. Connects with Kelly's jaw. Kelly staggers and Arthur keeps moving, trying to get behind the table, when a bullet from his own fucking Glock hits him in the side of the ribs. It knocks him off his feet and he lands, panting, to the side of the table.

His ribs are at least cracked and that will hurt later, but for now he's got to keep his cover. The next one might miss the vest entirely. Kelly's legs come into view as he stumbles toward him.

The closest thing within reach now is the leg of the utility table, with all the instruments on it. Arthur grabs it and pulls it hard, tipping it and sending instruments of metal and wire clattering to the floor. It stops Kelly for a moment as he fumbles past it, and Arthur gets to his knees and casts around for something else to use as a weapon.

His hand lands on the stun-gun. Maybe not the one that Kelly had used on Eames (over, and over, and over again,) but similar enough. When Kelly comes within range and aims the gun, this time at Arthur's head, Arthur jabs the stun-gun into his calf and pulls the trigger.

Kelly drops, screaming, and loses the Glock.

Arthur dives for it, grabs it, and gets to his feet, holding both guns trained on Kelly. He tucks one under his arm just for a second as he takes his phone back from Kelly's jacket and dials, one-handed, his fingers slick with sweat and slipping. 

"The basement of the warehouse!" he shouts, as soon as the other end picks up. "I need back up!"

Kelly is twitching, spasming on the floor, a string of pink drool coming from his lower lip. His eyes roll in the sockets, trying to search for his assailant. Arthur can remember what it felt like when Kelly had jabbed him with this thing in the dream; the instant, all-consuming pain, the loss of control. ' _I like your partner,_ ' Kelly had said to him. ' _I like electricity... he tried to stay quiet..._ ' All those marks on Eames, so many different places. The garrotte around his neck.

That instant of blind rage sweeps him again, and then Arthur is kneeling over Kelly and shoving the business end of the stun-gun into the gaping red vampire-mouth that has done nothing but taunt him for days, and he's pulling the trigger and Kelly is screaming, screaming, jerking, his eyes wide like they're going to pop.

' _...like electricity... do you still... fucking monster... your own_ son _... I should... I hope you..._ '

It takes a full three seconds of listening to that growling voice before Arthur realizes that it's his own - he's babbling, incoherent now, and his finger is still pulling the trigger of the stun-gun. 

And then he's backing off. Dropping the weapon and backpedaling until he hits the wall and crouches there.

The double-doors open at the top of the stairs and Arthur knows that it's not the feds, not yet, he would have heard their helicopters at least, when the door opened. 

"Mr. Kelly?" a voice calls.

 _Fuck, sound-proof room,_ Arthur remembers. They didn't hear the whole thing but they probably heard gunfire.

Kelly gives it all up by screaming and gurgling, and then his guard comes rushing down.

Arthur shoots him in the leg before he can get to the bottom of the steps. Then he dives for the light-switch and hits it, pitching the basement into darkness. The only light is from the double-doors upstairs, backlighting anyone who comes down.

Arthur finds a corner where he can see the stairs and crouches into it, a trapdoor spider. He calms his breathing and waits for more. He can take them all out from this position if he has to. He can wait all night. He's a patient man.

The guard he shot screams and screams. Kelly screams with him.

Voices ring out from above: orders to "GET DOWN, GET DOWN, HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEAD" and now he hears a helicopter overhead, too, someone shouting through a bullhorn that the place is surrounded, and he still doesn't know who's going to come down the fucking stairs. He can hear his own breathing over all of those sounds too.

"Backup in the basement, over here!" someone calls, and then there are heavy footfalls on the cement stairs, flashlights with high beams and guns pointed frantically at him, and finally, someone hits the light again.

"DROP YOUR WEAPON!" they shout at him, and years ago, he might not have.

But now he does. He drops both guns and raises his hands. A few of the bulls grab at Kelly and his guard, and a few more rush Arthur and spin him around hard, throwing him against the wall and _fuck_ that hurts, his head has been hit enough and his ribs feel like they're creaking under the pressure.

"I'm _Arthur_ ," he says against the filthy, blood-caked wall.

They take his phone, turn him around, shine the light in his face and he cringes away.

"You Arthur?" the big fed asks him, all suit and kevlar and helmet and business.

"Yes, that's what I just... Yes."

The guy grabs him by the arm and jerks him urgently away from the wall, dragging him to the stairs. And then up the stairs. He goes quietly, tiredly, almost in a daze. Through the warehouse and out the front entrance.

Outside, the sky is that vague pre-dawn blue.

The feds let them pass and once in the street, the guy gives him a long look.

"Arthur," he says.

Arthur nods. 

"Was that self defense down there? Because that guy's _mouth_ is fucked up."

Another nod. He doesn't care at this point. They can come at him with assault if they want, for handing them a serial killer. Fuck them.

"How long did he have you down there?"

"Long enough," Arthur says. He leaves it open to interpretation.

The fed takes a long, serious look at him. Maybe he sees something that Arthur's not aware of because he finally nods. "You probably need medical attention but this is a complicated situation, as you know."

He does know. He's not one of them, after all. To them, he's probably just as much of a hassle as Kelly. And the hassle that they could cause him would be endless. Questioning, paperwork, trials, people finding out his name, where he lives, what he does, how he operates. He nods again.

The guy pulls out a phone of his own and punches a few keys. "Message for you," he says. "And I quote. 'Heel it while the heeling's good and I can promise you a clean sneak. Thanks for the rumble, we owe you, baby.' End message."

Arthur manages a smile, one that he actually means. "Got it. Um. Can I have my Glock, please? Clean sneak, you know. And my phone. It's got all my music on it."

The guy hands both items over to him and he holsters the gun and pockets the phone.

He turns to walk away but the fed catches him by the arm and says, "Hey."

Arthur turns back. "Yeah?"

"Did you do all of this? I mean, I heard rumors about the point man, but..."

"No," Arthur says. "Wasn't me."

Behind his faceplate, the big lug smiles. He's pretty young, Arthur sees. Jesus, the feds are taking toddlers now. "Well," the guy says. "Anyway. Thanks, Special Agent."

Arthur quirks an eyebrow at that. Maybe once, ages ago, when he was a toddler like this guy, he could have gone down that road. Before the dreams, anyway. Before Cobb and Mal.

But the only road he's traveling tonight is the one back to the hotel, and he really hopes he can get a fucking taxi, because there's no way he's walking it.

"No problem," he says, and turns away.

As it happens, he gets a lift from a police car, and the guy doesn't ask him a single question the whole way, and even knows where to drop him off without asking.

He negligently offers money as if he's had a cab ride, and the cop tells him to go take care of himself and have a good night.

It's sunrise when he gets to the hotel, and to his surprise, everyone's apparently been up waiting for him outside in the brisk dawn air, even Eames who shouldn't be out of the bed.

Then: questions and squeals and comments and Cobb hugging him way to fucking hard and Ariadne trying to look at the blood on his face, Yusuf thankful and offering water, (which he accepts,) Joshua pale and sullen and leaning against the column that holds up the hallway roof, and Eames, dead silent, tight-lipped and staring at him with that unnerving intense focus.

Eventually Arthur extracts himself from the cluster and drags himself over to Eames, who looks as about to keel over as he feels, but his eyes are steady and unblinking, blank and dark, with that cross-hair stare.

"Don't be mad at me," Arthur says, because he's too tired to say anything else.

"Get inside," Eames rasps. 

Arthur does as he's told, leaving the others outside.

He peels his shirt off, and the vest, and kicks off his shoes and then somehow manages to get his pants off.

"Stop staring," he says, feeling Eames's eyes on him. "And stop being pissed off."

"You smell like death," Eames says. "Go have a shower and get rid of those clothes forever."

"Oh," Arthur says. "Right. Well I hit him with a femur."

Eames doesn't react to that at all except to keep staring a hole into him. Arthur thinks that maybe he'll explain another time, then.

"Go on," Eames finally says, his voice final and unflinching. 

He does everything Eames told him to, in a daze. Ties the clothes in a bag, stands under the hot water scrubbing the filth away, and then when he's done he brushes his teeth without looking in the mirror. The whole thing takes him about fifteen minutes. He realizes that he hasn't brought anything to wear into the bathroom and thinks, _Oh well_ , and goes into the room naked.

Eames is sitting on the edge of the bed, just where Arthur left him. "Jesus, Arthur," he says when he sees him.

"Forgot my pajamas." He gets a pair of pajama pants out of his suitcase and eases himself into them, and then he's just about done. He crawls into a bed—and it might be Eames's bed, he doesn't know—and breathes for a few seconds.

Eames climbs onto the bed beside him, side-lying and staring at his profile. Arthur cracks open an eye and looks at him.

"I said stop being mad," Arthur says.

"I'm not." He drapes his arm gently across Arthur's hips.

"Good," Arthur says. And then, "We'll listen to Murder Ballads when we," and then he's asleep.

** ** ** **

Eames is pretty sure that Arthur woke him from a nightmare or two during the morning, because he remembers Arthur's cool fingers on him, and his scratchy voice saying "shh, go back to sleep" a few times. He can't remember what the nightmares were but he's got a pretty good guess. And maybe, at some point, Arthur had even put his arms around him, carefully, so as not to disturb the bandages that Yusuf had put on his back. If so, that's a first.

Another first: Waking up with his hand over Arthur's crotch. They've rarely shared a bed, and any of the times they had—usually out of necessity—they slept far apart, on either side. But as of right now, Eames is pretty sure that he's cupping Arthur's bits and pieces in his sleep, and his thumb is even making slow circles. Eames is somewhere between _So sorry, darling_ , and _Well, why not_ , and then he notices that Arthur isn't even remotely responding to his sleep-molestation.

Eames quickly comes fully awake, vaguely alarmed.

"Arthur?" he asks, now brushing that same hand over Arthur's forehead. "Arthur!"

"Shh," Arthur answers, clumsily patting his hand. "S'all right, all right." He's still asleep. Every part of him, apparently.

Eames lifts the covers and glances down to find that, yes, his isn't working either. Which is probably for the best anyway, because the rest of him is so achingly stiff that he feels as if he's been carved out of cold rock. Every movement hurts every part of him, it seems. He would certainly have died the next time they had a go at him. There was no question. He would be dead, but for Arthur. Arthur, who jumped across an alleyway onto a fire escape for him. And who went back into the fire for Yusuf.

Although Yusuf didn't wake up accidentally trying to jerk Arthur off, so Eames guesses that even with all the pain he's feeling, he's still got the better end of the deal, currently.

He's just about to fall back into sleep, one hand now on Arthur's shoulder, when the alarm comes beeping to life.

Arthur is up in a second, and just as quickly flat on his back, gasping and curling his hand around the side of his ribs. "Fuck," he spits out. "Who set this alarm?" He turns the clock without getting up and Eames reads the digital numbers: 8:00. They've been asleep for maybe three hours.

"You probably did," Eames says, his mouth feeling fuzzy and almost unusable.

Arthur shakes his head. "Wasn't me. I set my alarm to 7." He sighs and turns over, carefully this time. "Just as well."

"Just as well what?" Eames says. "You can't be thinking of getting up?"

"You don't have to. I'll go get you some breakfast. I'm so fucking starved, I could eat my gun."

"Not a lot of fiber in that," Eames says. Now that he thinks of it, he's starving, too. "We could get room service?"

"We could," Arthur says. "But I can grab us something quicker, and then we should get the hell out of here before any more shit goes down. And I'm sure Cobb's going to be on the plane to Paris the second he gets out the door. Ariadne will have to... And Yusuf, we can... And then there's that kid, I guess we need to..."

"You've done enough," Eames says. 

"We're not out of the woods yet," Arthur says, and grabs his clothes on his way to the bathroom.

Eames wonders if Arthur will ever think that he's "out of the woods" or if "the woods" is some metaphorical place of danger that he lives in inside his head, constantly.

While Arthur is in the bathroom, Eames can hear Ariadne's voice from the next room over, and following that, Cobb's. Just two murmurs through the door, muffled, alternating. Deciding what to do next; he can tell by their inflections. Ariadne's speaking low; the boy is probably still asleep on his own. Yusuf on a trundle bed perhaps. Then Cobb and Ariadne? No, surely Cobb had split the bed with Yusuf. Yes, surely.

Eames is always pleasantly surprised at how quick Arthur is about getting dressed and ready to go. Arthur's quicker than he is, actually. He's in dark jeans and a crisp white shirt with the waistcoat over it – this he usually wears to hide the various weapons and gadgets he carries. His hair is styled back and although he still looks bone-tired, his movements are as precise as ever.

"Do you need help out of bed before I go?" he asks. 

"Let me see." Eames attempts it on his own. He's able to swing his legs over the edge of the bed, but when his thighs settle on it and he tries to extend his legs, pain shoots from his heels to the back of his neck. He grits his teeth and waits while black spots dance in front of his eyes.

"...not all right then I can get Cobb to come in and stay with you..." Arthur's voice fades in and out through the blood-pressure ring in his ears.

"I'm all right," he says, when the spots clear and sound comes back crisp enough for reality. "Just takes me a second."

"Lie back down, all right? Until I get back." Arthur slips a hand around the side of his neck and supports him as he leans sideways onto the pillow, then helps him get his legs back onto the bed.

"I feel like a child," Eames says.

"Well, you shouldn't. That was some serious shit back there, Eames. Kelly... he... Well, he wasn't fucking around. Some of the things... There was more... Well, never mind. Hey, just try to sleep for another few minutes, okay? I'll be back in a sec." And then, surprisingly, Arthur's chilly fingers brush over his temple, and smooth down the hair that's probably sticking up in all directions.

Even more surprisingly, this does not make Eames feel like a child.

He does manage to sleep lightly for the fifteen minutes it takes Arthur to return with something akin to breakfast: he's gotten a sandwich for Eames and a salad for himself.

"Who eats salad for breakfast, Arthur?" he asks, sitting up with more strength this time. Apparently the prospect of food has given him more motivation.

"They didn't have a lot. I got some muffins, too. And some tea." This last thing he says almost proudly.

"Lovely," Eames says, more pleased with the fact that Arthur is pleased than he is at the idea of cheap hotel tea in a cardboard cup. But he's going to pretend it's the most delightful thing ever.

Arthur sits on the edge of the bed and eats his salad as if he's thinking very hard, which is the way Arthur always eats. There's something off about him, though. Usually he looks angry at his food, as if he wants to call it rude names. Now, he just looks distant.

"How are your ribs?" Eames asks. 

"Mmm. Not bad," he says around a mouthful of romaine. 

"Going to tell me what happened last night any time?"

Arthur shrugs and makes a non-committal noise. "If you want to know."

"I'm asking."

Another shrug, this one too casual to be anything but forced. "Well, I went to the warehouse and Kelly sent Yusuf out. He asked me to go into the basement and I did because he had my Glock. So, we get down there, and he's got basically this medieval torture chamber with like, chains and things like that. And literally a pile of human remains in the corner."

The casualness in his voice is also forced, but anyone but Eames would miss this detail. He remembers the stench of the entire warehouse then, and remembers what Arthur smelled like when he came back to the hotel room.

"Last night," Eames says, "I thought it was the exhaustion talking. You told me you hit him...."

"Mm," Arthur says with a nod, still chewing. "With a femur. That's right. No, I really did. It was the closest thing." He swallows hard and reaches for the bottle of water. He nearly chokes on it; his chest hitches.

"Arthur," Eames says softly, not having to try very hard to imagine the horror of what he had seen.

Then he realizes that Arthur is not breaking down in tears of stress, but rather he's trying not to laugh into his water bottle. He cups his hand over his mouth and struggles not to spit, as his eyes crinkle at the corners. After he manages to swallow, he coughs a few times, going red in the face.

"Fucking hell," Eames says. It's really not even funny, not at all. Human remains mean that Kelly is likely a legitimate serial killer, one who had him strung up for over a day, and maybe _his_ bones would have been rotting away down there after a drawn-out death. Maybe someday someone would have found _his_ femur.

And then he's laughing, too, at first struggling valiantly not to, but quickly giving up. Laughing hurts, it hurts everything he owns and he knows he's going to pay for it in a few minutes. And laughing at something like this is terribly wrong. But Arthur's laugh—rare when it's hysterical like this—is actually the most contagious thing. 

"Essentially you were a _three_ -legged man in an arse-kicking contest, then," Eames says, and then Arthur spills over backward onto the bed, salad still in his lap. He would maybe feel bad about saying such a thing, but the way he's got Arthur laughing takes the edge off. Eames watches him indulgently for a few minutes. The after-effects of laughter don't hurt as much as he'd thought they would.

When Arthur finally sits up, his cheeks are still red and his lips keep quirking into a smile even when he tries to keep eating.

"Come on, man," Arthur finally says. "Finish your sandwich and then if you need help getting dressed or anything, you know."

"Right," Eames says. "Meantime, go on. So you hit him with a leg, and then?"

Arthur's eyes dart away and suddenly it feels like all the laughter has been sucked out of the room. He looks away. "And then I called for backup. I got my gun back and one of the guards came down and I shot him in the leg."

"And Kelly?" Eames presses gently.

"Kelly's in custody." Arthur, bless him, knows that's not the information he's looking for and stops trying to pretend. "I may have lost my temper. It was just, you know. To be honest I was kind of fearing for my life so I just grabbed the nearest thing and plugged him with it."

' _Plugged him with it._ ' The phrasing says everything Eames needs to know. The taser, or cattle prod or whatever Kelly had kept sticking him with, and having others stick him with.

"I may have gotten carried away," Arthur finishes softly. "He's alive. I mean, he'll live."

Maybe someday, Eames thinks, Arthur will tell him the rest of the details. Perhaps even soon. But he knows it's not going to happen on this morning.

"Well, you took care of it, Arthur, and that's what matters, you see."

"Yeah." Arthur finishes his salad and his water. Eames finishes the sandwich and is still decidedly hungry. He feels a little stronger and rises from the bed. He attempts a small stretch but quickly decides against it when everything seems to cramp at once.

"Hang on," Arthur says, rising quickly and wiping his hands on a napkin. He goes to Eames's suitcase and selects some clothes. "I'll give you a hand."

"Please," Eames says.

Arthur is always efficient, but "gentle" is not a word he would previously have ascribed to him, although now he thinks he should have known better. Arthur is whatever he needs to be at the moment, and patience has always been one of his strengths. His mind seems elsewhere as he methodically undresses him, checks the bandages on his back, and then helps him into fresh clothes.

"I'm going to get a comb," Arthur says, "because your hair looks like shit."

"You flatter me."

"Actually I do," Arthur says on his way into the bathroom. "It's pretty bad." He returns with a comb and his expression reads, ' _May I?_ ' 

"As I can't lift my arms," Eames says, "please, if you don't mind."

Arthur sits next to him on the bed and gently pulls the comb through his hair, smoothing it down with his hand. His fingers gently skim over the back of his neck, where there are surely marks from the stun-gun, and a ring of abrasions from the garrotte. He can feel Arthur's concern, frustration – or maybe anger building up again.

"I don't see how you're going to be able to take a long car ride," Arthur says. "Or sit in the train for more than a few hours, either. I thought I'd get us a flight, but..."

"But there's not enough time to disassemble weapons and PASIV and still get a flight today," Eames continues for him. "And the TSA is hardly going to let us through without checking us out, looking as we do." 

"Yeah," Arthur says, "we don't exactly look trustworthy."

"People will think ill of me." He raises his hand as far as it will go and skims his knuckles lightly over the bruised scrape on Arthur's cheek.

"Of you? Please. So...What do you think we should do?"

"There is nothing else to do except drive again. I'll lie down in the back."

"I was thinking," Arthur says, "maybe we don't have to get all the way back to New York right away. Even if we just get out of Vermont we should be okay. Then we can lie low until you're up to more traveling and then we can get to... Well, wherever it is. I mean, not that I'm implying that you have to come with me or anything, I just mean if you need anything from me, like help or something or if you just, whatever. That would be okay."

Eames has always sort of liked it when Arthur babbles. He likes to be the cause of it.

"I like to be alone, Arthur," Eames says, "and I know you do, too, but..."

"Yeah, totally," Arthur says. "And you have a lot of business to tie up in Mombasa that you can't leave hanging, and I definitely..."

"If you would let me finish," Eames says.

Arthur looks away but gestures for him to go on.

"But I can't imagine being alone right now. It's enough that I can't even quite get my own shirt on, but aside from that. It would be nice to be with another person."

"Yeah," Arthur says. But he doesn't sound as relieved or as hopeful as Eames had hoped.

In the distance, a fire alarm howls low, a mournful sound that feels lonely and desolate. Eames tries to imagine hearing it alone in this hotel room, without Arthur sitting beside him with a comb in his hand, scowling.

"Well, not any other person, obviously," Eames continues. "I'd rather it be you, quite honestly. In most cases."

Arthur smiles and looks down at his lap. Briefly, in the dim light of the hotel lamp, he looks like a child. 

' _...may have gotten carried away...' '...may have lost my temper...'_

No, not a child and sometimes not even human, or so it seems. And yet Eames wouldn't have him any differently. 

The moment is interrupted by the slamming of many car doors outside, and a din of voices so sudden and shrill that they both jump. They take a second to stare at each other in the way people have of silently asking, _Do we need to check?_ before nodding. Arthur gets up and grabs his Glock, holstering it.

"Wait here," he says.

"Fuck you, help me up."

"I don't want you getting hurt."

Eames fixes Arthur with a look that he suspects might actually, if not intimidate him, then convince him, occasionally. When he trains that look on other people, they tend to give up their secrets, beg, or run. Arthur just gets huffy, but eventually does as he's asked.

Arthur pulls him to his feet and helps him on with his coat before grabbing his own. The voices from outside rise, and now he can hear Cobb joining them, using his "calm down" voice.

When they get outside, it's not chaos that greets them, but definitely a scene. In the parking lot there are police cars (and Arthur's first instinct is to duck behind the column holding up the outdoor hallway roof,) an ambulance, some gathering onlookers, Cobb, Ariadne, Yusuf, and in the center of it all, Joshua Kelly holding a gun.

"Oh, shit," Arthur says, and takes a step in front of Eames, heading down the stairs.

Eames follows close behind, ready to pull Arthur out of the way of gunfire if he has to because he thinks that Arthur's bravery (and protection of Cobb and probably Ariadne by now, and obviously of him,) borders on stupidity. 

Cobb has both hands up, placating, and he's saying, "No one says you're getting put away, no one said that, okay, just put the gun down and let's talk about this." He takes a few steps toward the boy, holding his hand out.

Joshua pulls away. "Back off, don't touch me! I don't like to be touched!"

Eames is reminded violently of Arthur, and perhaps of Arthur That Was, the one he never met.

One of the cops asks Cobb who he is and tells him to stand aside and let them handle it. Cobb scowls at the cop and tells him that he's handled these situations before. And then he seems to remember that he's not the legally accepted extractor he once was, and he grits his teeth and stands down.

"Hey," Arthur calls across the parking lot. He takes purposeful strides toward the boy. "Hey, what the hell are you doing?"

"Sir," says a police officer, trying to block Arthur's way, "I'm gonna need you to..."

Arthur sneers at him and pushes his arm aside.

Eames knows he's a hell of a lot better than this "talking down" thing than Arthur probably is, but Arthur is already in Joshua's space – the circle that he's drawn for himself with the gun. Eames holds his breath. People in Joshua's state of mind are capable of sudden, terrible things.

"I'm not going with them!" Joshua says. He doesn't aim the gun at Arthur, though. "I'm not going to go into a hospital and I'm not fucking going back to my _father_. I'll kill him first. I'll fucking _kill_ him this time."

"Your father?" Arthur asks. "No, he's... well, he's going away, anyway. I highly doubt he'll be back. Well, umm. How about your mother?"

Unexpectedly, the boy's face crumbles. He wipes at his tears with the gun still in his hand. "Do you think he'd let her get in the way? She's been dead for fucking years. I have _no one._ "

Arthur takes a few more steps. Joshua collects himself visibly, and tightens his grip on the gun. Eames gets the distinct feeling that he'll use it on himself before he aims it at anyone else. But still, Arthur walks slowly, angling himself so that he's between everyone else and the gun. Eames can only see him in profile now.

"I had no one, too," Arthur says, softly. "Parents, I mean. I had them, but they weren't in the picture, much."

"Was your father a fucking murderer?" Joshua spits.

"No. I don't think so. I don't really know."

"I had one person," Joshua says. His shoulders slump and he sobs quietly, briefly. "He was. We were. My father put him in that fucking room. Made me watch. I don't know what happened to him after that. Down there in the basement. Maybe he's still alive. I need to find him." 

Arthur's face goes pale; Eames actually can see the color drain from his cheeks. The pile of human remains down there. He and Arthur laughing hysterically over the femur. God, god, _fuck._

"No, I don't think he's alive," Arthur says. "I was... Your father took me down there. No one was alive. I'm sorry."

Joshua cries openly, sobbing like a child – which he is, god damn it all, Eames thinks – and then presses the gun to his temple.

"Put it down," Arthur says, his voice calm. "I get it. Put it down."

Joshua stares at him for a long moment, as if trying to figure him out. 

Eames senses something else going on here, some undeniable recognition of spirit. It's no secret that Arthur lost someone, because he's mentioned her, and because sometimes his projections play on a loop and he sees a girl, in Arthur's bloodiest dreams. Arthur might not even be entirely aware of her presence in his mind anymore, or if he is, he doesn't talk about it.

"He was the only thing I loved," Joshua says. His voice is crushed and broken, but he's lowering the gun. "He was the only thing I loved!"

In a split second Eames watches Arthur's expression change to one of a man surprised to find himself looking into a mirror, and the same revelation instantly plays out on Joshua's face. 

And then Joshua flings himself at Arthur. 

Ariadne gasps and Cobb lurches forward like he's going to grab the boy, and the cops draw their pistols, but Eames stands watching, because he gets people better than any of them.

And he is the only one among them unsurprised when the boy who doesn't want to be touched throws his arms around Arthur and clings to his jacket, sobbing into his waistcoat. And the man who doesn't like to be touched – unless he initiates it – doesn't react except to put his arms around the kid's shoulders. He shuts his eyes tightly and says, "I get it, I get it."

"What do I do now?" Joshua asks. "What do I do?"

"I don't know," Arthur tells him. "See it through, I guess."

Joshua pulls away a little and looks up at him, fiercely. "Did you kill him? My father?"

"No," Arthur answers, quick. "No, I...I hurt him though."

"Good," Joshua says, with all the passion of hatred. "I hope he feels it forever. I want to see him. I want to see what you did."

"I don't think that's..."

"And I want to do what you do," Joshua continues, letting go of Arthur's jacket. He wipes his eyes dry and straightens his back, shoulders squared.

"Then, I guess," Arthur says, "you have to see it through. Don't really have a choice, if that's what you want." He holds his hand out, palm up. For a second Joshua looks confused, and then he drops the gun into Arthur's hand, ashamed and tired.

The cops rush him now that he's unarmed but Arthur puts himself in front of the boy and says, "Don't."

But they're not interested in what Arthur has to say, and finally Eames puts himself into the situation, coming up on the other side of the kid. Cobb is there too, the three of them blocking him from being rushed and grabbed and manhandled. He knows it's not going to work. They have no power here.

Then, from behind them comes a stern voice, speaking in authoritative tones. "No one is to take that boy into custody." 

They all turn to see a uniformed man flashing some sort of ID. It looks like FBI. Eames looks to Arthur, who looks back at him and shrugs, shaking his head as if to say, ' _I have no clue._ ' So, not Arthur's connections, then. 

Behind the man in uniform, a black Mercedes lurks, idling in the parking lot. It has diplomatic plates and the country code is "AF."

Arthur looks at Eames, smirking and shaking his head.

** ** ** **

Arthur's arm begins to sting again and he feels a trickle of warmth down his bicep; the kid had dislodged the hastily wrapped bandage from where Kelly's bullet had grazed him. He brushes at it absently and shrugs it off.

The uniformed man comes forward, barking orders and flashing some kind of ID that Arthur doesn't even recognize. 

Apparently, the cops don't either, and there are some feds involved here, too, and they look just as skeptical and guarded.

"Mr. Eames," Arthur says.

"Hmm?"

"You're the one with the insanely detailed memory. What country code is AF on diplomatic plates?"

Eames is still smirking. "I do believe it's Japan, Arthur."

"That's what I thought."

While the cops are busy with this new guy and his mysterious ID and orders to leave the kid alone, one of the actual feds starts harassing Cobb for ID. Cobb, nervous now, pulls his wallet out of his back pocket.

"That's not necessary," Arthur says, trying to come between them.

"It's all right," Cobb says, but clearly he knows that it isn't. This kind of situation is never going to go well for him. He can't be charged with the murder of his wife, but people can find a way to make his life difficult.

"I beg your pardon," says another voice, this one from the now-open car of the black Mercedes. Loud, slightly arrogant, and heavily accented. "What you do not seem to realize," says Saito, walking up to join the chaos, "is that this man has _total_ immunity."

Cobb turns his head, his eyes wide, mouth slightly open, surprise written all over his face. "I..do?"

"Yes, Mr. Cobb," Saito says. "Total immunity." He hands a stack of papers over to the fed who had been about to start badgering him.

Arthur takes a moment to stop his mouth from hanging open. He's feeling some uncomfortable mix of gratitude and guilt. Even he, with his one federal connection, couldn't clear Cobb. Couldn't grant him this one thing. And now Saito has given it to him in spades. Cobb is essentially untouchable. 

"It took a bit more time," Saito says to Cobb, in a low voice. "But I got it for you." Then he turns back to the rest of them, the cops, feds, everyone, like an orator. "This man is an esteemed international de-programmer. He works with abused and brainwashed children."

Arthur watches Cobb and thinks, _'Please don't ask, "I do?" Just keep your mouth shut for once...'_ To his relief, Cobb takes a second to think about this and then nods. 

Eames leans close to Arthur and asks, "Can you believe this shit?"

"I actually can," Arthur says. 

"So," Saito continues, "once you have verified that those papers are legitimate, you are released from your responsibility to the rest of this case. I would like to have a moment with my team, please."

"Excuse me, Mister," says one of the cops, one of the younger ones, "but we got called here to investigate a youth who was wielding a weapon and we find out he's the son of the city's biggest crime syndicate boss, so we really can't..."

"You can," Saito says. "You are relieved of this case. It's in diplomatic hands now. The boy has a scholarship fund set aside for his welfare and education. You may of course confirm this in your computers." He waits, with a patient smile.

"I fucking love this guy," Eames says, close to Arthur's ear. "He's kind of magnificent. Wish I could give orders like that."

 _I don't,_ Arthur thinks. _It's not worth the trillions of dollars, to live always on the brink of loss, always keeping your eyes on every competitor and investment. It's too much._

A few cops hang around, calling in to headquarters and a few feds go back to their cars to double check this new information, while Saito's uniformed guy with the ID (that Arthur still hasn't identified,) takes Joshua aside for a moment. 

"Mr. Saito," Cobb says. "I don't even know how to thank you."

"Thank _me_?" Saito says. "All I did was honor our agreement. You saved an empire."

Cobb looks like he's considering any number of things to say to that, but he says nothing. Instead he just nods his head, almost a bow.

"My other offer was sincere," Saito says. "About continuing to work. I don't know how you feel about dreaming anymore, Mr. Cobb. But there are many people who require your particular skill set. Not extraction. Not inception. But de-programming."

"I've looked into it," Cobb says. "It doesn't have as high a success rate as... well..."

"As it should, Mr. Cobb? Because less skilled people are attempting it?"

"I'm un-hirable, Saito," Cobb says. "At least in the world of legitimate business.

"Not anymore," Saito answers. "Think about it, Mr. Cobb."

"I will," Cobb says. And he leaves it at that. And he will continue to leave it at that for a while, Arthur thinks. Cobb has his children back, and he doesn't seem to require much more than that, at present. But sooner or later he will have to work again. Arthur thinks that he will likely consider a job offer like this one.

"I understand," Saito says, "that it may have been one of my people who put you all in this position. If this turns out to be so, let this begin my reparations."

"Not necessary," Arthur says. "Seriously. Everyone has someone who would give them up. It happens."

"Nonetheless," Saito says, "This is my way of handling business. Where are you traveling to?" he asks Cobb.

"Paris, where my kids are. Today, if I can get a flight."

"You can," says Saito. Then he turns to Ariadne. "And you?"

"Paris," she answers quickly.

Saito's eyebrows go up, and he looks from her, to Cobb, and then back to her, slightly smiling.

"Oh!" Ariadne says. She waves both hands, a little scattered and embarrassed. "No! I mean, that's where I'm studying. Back to school, I mean. I just, I came out for, I'm American and it was Thanksgiving so I was here. But now I'm going back to Paris. To school."

"Of course," Saito says, indulgent. Then he turns to Yusuf. "You?"

"To my lab in England, actually. I have some work there."

"Done," says Saito. Then he turns to Arthur.

"Umm." Arthur says. He hates asking for favors. Hates taking them. He would rather give the comfort of a quick flight to Eames, and he certainly doesn't want to assume he knows where Eames is going. "I'm headed back to New York. I can get there no problem, but Mr. Eames here, depending on where he wants to go... What I mean is, I think you should give consideration to him first." 

"Well, as I'm going to _New York_ , Arthur," Eames says, huffy and eye-rolly.

"I just didn't want to assume, all right?" Arthur asks, irritated, and aware that now everyone is looking at them.

"We talked about this in the room this morning," Eames says, "remember when I said that it wouldn't do to..."

"I know," Arthur says, "we talked about it but I just wasn't sure if we made a definite..."

"...and I said I'd rather go with you anyway..."

"But we were only talking about getting through TSA and..." 

"I would only be a burden if I stayed with Yusuf, which is not to say that you don't have things to do too..." Eames goes on.

"I just thought maybe if Saito was offering you a safe flight to somewhere else you might want to go there instead."

They both fall quiet, looking at each other.

"Do you want me to go somewhere else?" Eames asks.

"No, asshole. I told you that."

"No you didn't, you little prick," Eames says.

"Well, I just did."

"Well, fine then." Eames turns back to Saito. "We're going to New York. Thank you, Saito-san."

Saito just looks at them both, amused. Ariadne has the nerve to laugh behind her hand. 

"You have nothing to thank me for," Saito says.

"I do," Eames answers, somber all of a sudden. "We got swept into a real situation this time, and getting home was going to be a difficult endeavor. Your generosity saves us a lot of trouble and saves me a lot of pain."

"What is generosity with money," Saito says, "to a man like me? It's nothing. When you have something in abundance, it is easier to give away. A man like you, Mr. Eames, who has generosity here..." Saito pats his hand over his chest. "I remember the third level, very clearly. The dream marked me. You put determination...you put regard for other people, _here._ " This time, he points to his temple.

Eames is damn near shuffling his feet as he looks down. "Just doing my work, mate," he says.

Arthur feels the dawning of something ridiculous, like pride. As if he wants to say, ' _Yes, I work with him. I only take the best._ ' Instead, he smirks at Eames's discomfort, because that's just as much fun.

"Well," Saito says, once again addressing them all, "I seem to have missed the adventure, regretfully."

"Please," Ariadne says. "You didn't want any part of this one. Detonating necklaces, things getting blown up, crazy people, vaginas with teeth."

Saito raises his eyebrows.

"I'm not even kidding," Ariadne says, without blinking.

"Next time, perhaps," Saito says, "we will all have a dream together. In Kyoto, perhaps. A fantastic dream."

"Sounds good," Eames says. He reaches out and shakes Saito's hand. "Thanks, seriously."

Arthur shakes his hand too and says, "Thank you, sir," not trusting himself to pronounce his name right, because he can't ever fucking remember how the vowels go in Japanese.

"Arthur-san," Saito says, clapping him gently on the shoulder – an American gesture. One that would make Arthur wince with pain if he were the type of man to do such a thing.

Saito then takes Cobb aside; Ariadne follows, as she has always followed after Cobb, since she met him. Yusuf comes over to Eames, to see how he's holding up.

Joshua stands alone, outside of a waiting ambulance. Arthur takes a look at him, and then, on a rare whim, holds up one finger in a "wait there" gesture before going back up the stairs to his hotel room. He has no idea why he's doing this. It's probably really stupid.

But on the other hand, if Cobb and Mal hadn't shown him some kindness when he was in college, hadn't shown some interest in him, he would not be where he is today. He wonders how how he would have ended up. Working for the FBI, maybe. That, or in jail. Or dead. 

He returns outside with his hat in his hand, and approaches Joshua. Slowly, like holding a hand out to an injured dog.

"What?" Joshua says, the barrier back in place.

Arthur gestures with his hat toward Saito. "Do you know who that is?"

"No. Should I?"

"No," Arthur says. "But you probably will. You can trust him. I know it's hard to trust anyone, but. He's a man of his word, anyway."

"Why is he even here? Do I have to work for him?"

"No," Arthur says. "It's not like that. He kind of owes us something, me and Eames. It's possible that one of his people sold us out. This is his way of taking care of it. You got mixed up in it just by being Kelly's son."

"I'm not his son," Joshua says, eyes narrowed.

"No," Arthur agrees mildly. "I guess you're not."

Joshua scuffs his expensive shoes, twists his hands together, and a piece of the barrier comes down again. "Before," he says, not looking at Arthur. "Before when we were...talking. You said that you got it. You understood what I meant. Did you, like. I don't know. You lost someone? In a harsh way."

"Yes," Arthur says. "I had a chance to prevent it from happening. I fucked it up. I was in school; I didn't know as much then as I do now. I don't think about it much these days. It's not who I am anymore."

"How do you forget?" Joshua asks. "Can you forget with the dream machine?"

"No. You can't forget. And it's best not to, anyway. When you bury shit, it tends to dig its way up more traumatically later on."

"I keep seeing his face," Joshua says, his eyes shut tight.

"I know," Arthur says, thinking of the stench of early rot, the stiffness and pooled blood mottling skin he had once touched and kissed so fondly. Maybe it's not so long ago after all. Maybe he still is that scared high school boy trying to bury it all under logic and bravado.

"You and Mr. Eames are partners, huh?" Joshua says, suddenly eager to change the subject. Maybe he's caught the look on Arthur's face.

"Yeah," Arthur says. "It's hard to find people you can trust in the criminal business."

"Shit, you guys really are criminals."

"Yeah," Arthur says. "Well, I play both sides of the fence." Then he cringes, thinking about what he's just said. Joshua chooses to ignore the innuendo.

"Look after him," Joshua says. 

Arthur looks at the boy's face: serious, earnest, unguarded.

"Seriously. Don't let him get caught again by someone as fucked up as my Dad. I saw you jump across that fucking alley. I would have done the same thing. _Should_ have."

"Don't. You're not responsible. You can't save everyone." _You're just a kid,_ he doesn't add. "Thinking that will just fuck you up. Take whatever scholarship Saito is giving you, see it through, and then you'll do better."

"I want to do what you do," Joshua says.

Arthur smiles, and doesn't tell him, _No, you don't._ He loves his work. It's worth it.

"I want to be...like you." The boy rolls his eyes as he says it, and looks away, as if he knows it's stupid but he's saying it regardless.

And there, that's all it takes for Arthur to make up his mind. 

"Keep this, huh?" he says, handing his fedora over to the boy. It actually kind of hurts to let go of it; he's had it for years and it's kept his hair dry in the rain and in place for years. He had been wearing it the second time he'd met Eames and it's still in pretty good condition. "I've dodged a few bullets in it. It's good luck."

Joshua takes it from his hand, gingerly. "Good luck, huh? I don't really know what good luck feels like." 

"You will," Arthur says.

And then Eames is hailing him and Saito is shaking hands with Cobb and the party in the parking lot seems to be breaking up. 

He holds his hand out to Joshua. "Take care of yourself."

"Yeah," Joshua says, shaking his hand, but this time for real, his grip cold and firm. "you too."

Then he leaves the kid to Saito and whatever plans he's got for him, and joins the rest of the team.

"You didn't just give a three-hundred dollar Italian hat to that kid," Eames says, smiling. "You know he can afford anything he wants."

"You cant buy luck," Arthur says. "And besides, mine nearly ran out this week. It's time for a new good luck charm."

"You're _superstitious_ ," Ariadne says, incredulous. 

Arthur digs into his pocket and holds up his totem, the loaded die. "I like to know what my odds are before betting on something," he says. "But there are no sure things. Sometimes you need a little luck."

** ** ** **

Two hours later, they are on a private jet, with fully reclining seats and Eames is side-lying, facing Arthur who is lying on his back, iPhone held over his face, scrolling through music.

"I have some frozen pizzas," Arthur says, "but honestly, we should just get a real one because what they say about New York pizza is true, and I'm starving."

"I've never seen your flat," Eames says. "Is it posh, neat and tidy and full of gadgets?"

"Well, it's full of gadgets, at least," Arthur says. "I have a Wii." 

Eames frowns slightly. "Thank you for oversharing, Arthur. There's a toilet up front, I saw it on the way in."

Arthur looks away from his phone, perplexed, his _what the fuck are you on about now?_ face that Eames finds quite amusing. Then he does the little sneer and eye-roll that makes Eames want to punch him in the face or throw him out of the plane or relieve him of his belt and whack it across his bottom, and now his thoughts are getting way out of control.

"The video game system, you ass," Arthur says. "Did you seriously not know that?"

"You're telling me you play games?" Eames says.

"Fuck you, they keep me sharp."

"Will you show me how to play?"

"I'll have you killing zombies by evening," Arthur says.

Eames thinks it over. He's really not one for pizza, or video games, or even New York, really, and he knows that soon—too soon—he'll be called back to his own shady business and Arthur will go about his own criminal ways, and again, they'll separate. And when the opportunity presents itself once more, maybe months, maybe a year down the road (he hopes it's not that long,) he and Arthur will come crashing into each other, pulling some heist and dodging bullets, running from the law and sometimes running _to_ the law.

It will be Arthur though, because Eames only works with the best, these days.

Even if "the best" prefers to shoot zombies when he's not shooting real-life thugs. Arthur's plans for right now sound fine to him. Anyone else, he would tell them to fuck off.

"You wanted to play an album for me," Eames says, surprised at how low his own voice sounds. 

The plane rises above the clouds and a sunlight spills over them. Arthur glares at the sun like he wants to shoot it out of the sky and leans across Eames to draw the blind, before settling back down. He hasn't drawn it all the way, and as the plane takes a turn, a shaft of orange light plays across the angle of Arthur's jaw.

"I was going to, but..."

Eames reaches out and slides his fingers along the shaft of light, cutting Arthur off mid-sentence. Arthur raises an eyebrow, smirking.

"But the flight's not long enough for that," he finishes. His eyes go a little softer. "And I'm not in the mood for Murder Ballads right now. Not yet."

"My iPod is in my bag," Eames says. "If you'll reach down and grab it?"

Smiling, Arthur does so. He hands one speaker to Eames and keeps the other for himself. 

"That one song you played for me on the train," Arthur says. "Rachmaninoff?"

"Liked that one, did you?"

"It makes me feel calm." A strange emotion in Arthur's voice then, some kind of blankness beyond calm. Eames wonders at it, but doesn't comment.

Instead he just flips through his music until he finds the one that Arthur liked, and taps 'Play.' 

He can sleep like this, even through the pain, on the barely 30-minutes-long flight. Just for a while, he can rest, with Arthur beside him, his chilly, deadly hands absently air-conducting in the shaft of afternoon sunlight.

\--end

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone really wants to know, the song that Arthur likes is the Piano Concerto No.2. [The melody is very dark](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8l37utZxMQ) and there's something ridiculously hot about Arthur killing many men with this song in his head. WTF is wrong with me. We've yet to figure it out but I'll bet it's hard to pronounce.


End file.
